Coalition helping Afghan families resettle in Norman

Apr. 15—Over the last few months, a group of families has quietly made Norman their new home.

Since the United States pulled out of Afghanistan last fall, Oklahoma has received just over 1,800 Afghan refugees, CAIR Oklahoma reported last month. Eight Afghan families and one individual have resettled in Norman with the help of the Norman Coalition for Refugee Support and its partners.

The coalition is an interfaith effort spearheaded by St. Stephen's United Methodist Church and multiple other Norman churches that has helped refugees from multiple countries. Their first refugee came from Venezuela several years ago, and today has a job and a child, and owns a house in Moore.

With partners like Catholic Charities — which assigns refugee families to the coalition — The Spero Project, local churches and mosques and other organizations across Norman, the coalition of more than 50 volunteers is walking Afghan families through a three-step resettlement process, coalition co-chair Brent Smith said.

First, there's the basic needs of providing housing and clothes. When they first arrived in the state, refugee families were housed at an Oklahoma City hotel, where they received resources from Catholic Charities and medical agencies.

Of the families the Norman coalition is helping, one has two children, but most have six to eight children, Smith said. All have the same basic needs at the beginning, but may need unique resources as the process goes on.

Food and Shelter, a Norman nonprofit that helps provide housing and resources to the city's unhoused residents, has been a key partner to the coalition in helping them resettle Afghan families and beyond.

April Doshier, the nonprofit's executive director, said Food and Shelter has helped other families through the coalition in the past, and was able to move the Afghan families into safe housing.

"As the Afghan situation unfolded, and it became clear we were as a country taking on all these refugees, they came in just such mass numbers with little to no structure to their resettlement, and so [the coalition] reached out to me just to see what kind of options were available," she said. "And we happen to have received some support, some funding to provide rehousing assistance to whomever needs it, anybody that qualified as homeless, which all of these folks did. And so we worked with the coalition to help identify safe and appropriate housing, and Food and Shelter helped get them moved into their places so that they could start their lives over."

Aside from community partners that help supply resources and connections, the coalition has multiple internal committees made up of their volunteers, Smith said. Committees handle specific issues, from tracking donations to helping find refugee transportation and employment, to ensuring kids get enrolled in schools and families have access to English language learning programs.

The coalition also provides family liaison cohorts, groups of volunteers who check on and assist the specific family they're assigned to. The liaisons give families a point of contact when they need assistance.

All refugee families also receive a case manager from Catholic Charities, Smith said; liaisons look for red flags or concerns within the families and can relay issues to case managers.

The second stage of resettlement goes beyond the very basics, as volunteers help connect refugees to doctors, dentists and immunizations and jobs. Smith said the coalition has already seen one birth among the refugee families.

Then there's the third stage, the "refining" stage of figuring out how to address struggles with English language learning, identifying kids' tutoring needs or helping fathers settle in at work and adjust to the American workplace.

Smith said Afghan culture is heavily built on kinship, so the coalition was lucky that some of the Norman Afghan families are actually related.

"...As those liaisons are focused on the family pretty intensively the first three or so months, their presence in the house decreases over time — partly because the family is learning their way around, but also because this extended family is helping each other," Smith said.

Smith said families aren't ready to speak with the press or be out in public too much yet — the coalition is focusing heavily on building and maintaining trust with the families, who are rebuilding from scratch after arriving in Oklahoma with a suitcase full of belongings and not much else.

Coalition volunteers have worked on learning and expanding their own knowledge bases to understand the families' needs. In this specific case, it's been helpful that some of the fathers were interpreters who already spoke English and can help bridge communication gaps, he said.

"One of the things we've learned early on that we needed, just as white privileged Americans, that we needed to understand that our perspective on how we're going to help Afghans or even those from the southern border, we need to ask, before we tell," Smith said.

Despite the privacy the coalition maintains for the families, the organization itself has started to publicize more of its work. The coalition recently won the 2021 City of Norman Human Rights Award from the Norman Human Rights Commission and has given presentations about its work to the city, local nonprofits and rotary clubs.

Smith said the coalition should soon have a website online where interested people can find opportunities to help out. While the group will only take on new refugee families as it's able, Smith said the coalition anticipates helping resettle four to six families each year, on average.

Doshier said assisting the coalition has made her proud of the work they're doing in Norman.

"The first day I sat down with the father of our first family that we helped settle here in Norman, we couldn't speak to each other because of the language barrier," she said. "But as one of my friends said, you know, warmth is felt by all people and so, he, I think he knew that we were there to care for them and support them, and his gratitude was so special. And so to be able to see that, that relief and gratitude and see them grow from being just afraid to flourishing has been just really really special. It's what this country was built on. and it makes you proud to be part of something like that."

Emma Keith is the editor of The Transcript, where she covers Norman Public Schools and the University of Oklahoma. Reach her at ekeith@normantranscript.com or at @emma_ckeith.