AmeriCorps Week Celebration

Siri, Elizabeth, Soni (the AmeriCorps supervisor) and Michael enjoy a photoshoot outside of the CWS Durham office. This week nonprofits across the country are celebrating AmeriCorps Week – a week to highlight the dedication and hard work that AmeriCorps members bring to the nonprofits that they serve. This year, CWS Durham is hosting three wonderful AmeriCorps members – Elizabeth, Siri, …

Sanctuary and CWS

  by Jennie Belle Church World Service is committed to serving the most vulnerable in our world. At the CWS Durham office, this means assisting refugees on the road to beginning a new life in the United States through legal services, assistance with housing, job training and placement, and English classes. However, there are other ways of helping those who …

Giving Tuesday!

A big THANK YOU to everyone who donated to CWS Durham on Giving Tuesday! We hit $4,975 total for the day between Facebook and regular website donations. Not only that, but we earned about $2,000 before Facebook matching money ran out! It was a great day for our office, and we were all walking around with huge smiles because we …

“I will never forget the compassion”: An Intern’s View of CWS Legal Services

Cerina interned with CWS Durham Immigration Legal Services in the Summer of 2018, where she was a huge help to our legal team and got to be a part of the great CWS Scavenger Hunt of 2018 (the context for this ridiculous photo). She hopes to pursue a career in legal services after experiencing both sides of this hugely important …

Enjoying the Little Things: An Update from the Border

This August, CWS Durham case manager Krista Camp was deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border for ten weeks to support a shelter for asylum-seekers leaving detention. You can read her previous updates here and here. Watching twenty-five women, men, and children from Guatemala and Mexico walk through an Arizona university campus wearing ankle monitors is something the students don’t see every day. However, when …

“I Want to be a Doctor Again”: Reducing Refugee Brain Waste through TAP-F

Written by Julia Hause 9:58, 9:59, 10:00. I look up from my desk, which faces the front door of our office. Bright, smiling faces greet me on the other side of the door as I open the office to clients for our daily walk-in hours. Here, I answer questions ranging from ‘How do I pay my electricity bill?’ to, ‘I …

“More Than Words”: an update from the border

This August, CWS Durham case manager Krista Camp was deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border for ten weeks to support a shelter for asylum-seekers leaving detention. You can read her first update here. Read on for a story of friendship that crosses borders: As adults, we often get caught up in the differences between other people and ourselves. Whether you call …

Reuniting Families – 7 Things You Can Do

This list is reposted from Triangle Interfaith Advocates for Refugees and Immigrants’ (TIARI) website at www.tiari.org. TIARI is an interfaith coalition that partners with CWS Durham to advocate for welcoming policies and to support refugees and immigrants. Here are 7 simple things you can do to make your voice heard in support of reuniting families. Pick one, and get started! (or two, …

Family Separation Event – A Guest Post by Triangle Interfaith Advocates for Refugees and Immigrants (TIARI)

This event recap is reposted from TIARI’s website at www.tiari.org. It offers brief stories of four families impacted by immigration policies related to separated families, which were shared at a joint event hosted by CWS Durham and TIARI. Last week, over 100 people from many different faith traditions and backgrounds came together on one evening to hear the heart-wrenching stories …