Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!

Let there be snark.

To the privileged, equality seems like oppression.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

That meeting sounds like a shotgun wedding between a shitshow and a clusterfuck.

So many bastards, so little time.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

When I was faster i was always behind.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

Boeing: repeatedly making the case for high speed rail.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

It is possible to do the right thing without the promise of a cookie.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / How to Help

How to Help

by | 31 Comments

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700 more refugees drowned.

And good people wonder what to do.

You can give money, of course. But a lot of people can’t afford to give much. Maybe you’d like to help more, or more directly. In that case, as the former foster mom of four South Sudanese refugees, a.k.a., “Lost Boys,” and former manager of a couple of Boston-based refugee microenterprise programs, I have a suggestion: give your time and skills.

Find a local immigrant or refugee group—or simply an individual or family–and spend a few hours a week or month helping them get health care, enroll their kids in school, learn English (or whatever the main language is in your locale), get into college, find jobs, start businesses.

If you’ve got a skill to share, such as carpentry, auto mechanics, sewing, or gardening, find refugees who are similarly inclined and work with them to develop their skills and employability.

If you’re part of a profession, such as programming, law, medicine, accounting, or engineering, help a young person enter your field.

Please note that some groups of refugees, like the Iraqis, tend to be highly educated; and also some individuals from other groups. There are often credential and other barriers to their practicing their profession in their new country, but you can help them navigate the system and figure out alternatives.

Even if you think you don’t have anything to teach, I promise you you have. Immigrants and refugees often need help in areas native-born people take for granted, including things like how to how to be a wise consumer or apply for a job (both offline and online). Just show up and ask what’s needed.

The rewards of this kind of volunteering are rich, and the ROI is as high as any I know of. You typically help not only the person(s) themselves, but their extended family here and at home. (Because of remittances and also communication of information and strategies.) You also build a lot of cross-cultural appreciation and understanding, as the pic of a couple of 3-footers showing some 6.5-footers how to play Twister attests. (The 3-footers are my niece and nephew, who are somewhat bigger now).

To find a group, Google “YOUR TOWN refugee assistance.” Or, contact your local community college or religious organizations for leads. If you can’t find your niche email me and I’ll be happy to help.

twister 3

Reader Interactions

31Comments

  3. 3.

    Miss Bianca

    @srv: I wish I had $100 to spare, I’d take you up on that offer. Guess I’m just going to have to keep doing circus classes at the immigrant housing complex instead!

  5. 5.

    Miss Bianca

    @Hillary Rettig: tumbling, trapeze, clowning. Mostly I just raise the money for it and do the odd bit of spotting – the instructors with the real mad skillz lead the classes!

  8. 8.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @srv:

    Just sent $35, and wish it could be more. Thank you for your generous matching gift.

    ETA: And thank you, Hillary Rettig, for putting up this thread.

  14. 14.

    Origuy

    A friend on Facebook posted a rant about phony charities earlier today and someone suggested using Charity Navigator so I checked out Mercy Corps. They have a four-star rating, if anyone was wondering. I kicked in $35. I’ll reply to that post as well, suggesting them.

  15. 15.

    jackie

    Some churches have weekend afternoons — often Sundays — when immigrants can come in and get help from volunteers. One person I know volunteers to help fill out forms, help with math issues, fill out tax returns, write resumes, fill out job applications, etc. All very useful. Another with a medical background listens to health question & directs to resources. (Not practicing medicine, mostly just medical to lay translating. Of course translators are also needed. It is a Catholic one here. Worth checking.

  16. 16.

    Wyliecoat

    @srv: just put in 50 bucks. Thanks for the suggestion..it’s so helpful when someone had already vetted a charity.

  21. 21.

    PurpleGirl

    @Origuy: Charity Navigator is an excellent resource for checking out charities. The non-profit I had worked at once had a top ranking from them; sometime between now and when I left Learning Leaders, they shrank in size by a good 50%, and moved. But I remember sending them the materials they requested from us so they could analysis us. They get the Form 990 from the IRS directly and do not ask the organization financial questions that could be fudged. They work off of the IRS provided information.

  24. 24.

    Troublesome Carp fka Geeno

    So the next thread has gotten 250+ comments while this one languishes. Yes, thanks especially to srv, much good has been done, but c’mon this community is better than that. Unfortunately, I am still riding some financial unsettlement – I’ll be fine in the long run, but paycheck to paycheck for a couple months until dust settles, if it does – or I’d be announcing my own donation.
    I realize lots of people are in a similar boat to mine, but I was hoping for more activity here.

  25. 25.

    PurpleGirl

    A reminder to people who want to contribute clothes or household items about usability and suitability: Back in the mid-1980s when I was attending a Lutheran Congregation, we sponsored a family from Vietnam. We would not be supporting them with money but checking in with them to explore and help solve problems, stuff like that. We asked our members for clean, usable clothes and household items.

    Half the clothes had to be thrown out — just thrown out. They were too big, very worn, had shiny patches, worn patches. I could tell it was clothes from set of sisters of German background because the style of the coats and suits were from old white men, at least 6-ft tall and a few hundred pounds. The sisters probably had the stuff in the attic or cellar and decided to get rid of the stuff now. Some of the household items were also old and used, appliances that didn’t work well anymore.

    Please, Please if you donate goods to people, make sure the items are still good. Don’t waste the collectors’ time having to sort through it all and make them cover the cost of disposal. It really made me mad. We ended up taking money from the church’s treasury to buy suitable things.

  27. 27.

    Kalimama

    @srv: Just sent $35, and wish it could be more. Thank you for your suggestion and thank you, Hillary Rettig, for putting up this thread

  28. 28.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Hillary Rettig: I saw the Stooges as a kid circa 1960, live on an open-air stage at the old Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Baltimore. The one thing I remember clear as day is Moe, his bowl cut now salt&peppered, saying after one shtick ended, Kids, I’d like to talk to your parents for a minute now–& continued (I paraphrase), Folks, we were just a bunch of washed-up vaudeville comedians until your children found us. And we can’t ever tell you how grateful we are to them for saving our careers. It was a sweet moment.

  29. 29.

    satby

    @srv: I’m overdrawn and still owe on a kitty bleg but I will be donating in your honor Thursday srv, thanks! And thanks to the folks who met srv’s challenge as well as Hillary Rettig for front paging this.
    Restores my faith in humanity after a Bern flame thread.

  30. 30.

    Miss Bianca

    @Uncle Cosmo: My ex had a great friend in Ted Raimi, whose great-uncle worked in Hollywood on Three Stooges movies and other shorts of the period. Hence the Raimi Brothers’ great fascination with the Three Stooges, particularly Shemp. I finally got to the point where I appreciated the artistry in even low buffoonery, and came to like the Three Stooges again after a long time of thinking them merely silly.

  31. 31.

    sherparick

    The underlying problem driving this migration is an environmental/social/political/religious catastrophe that stretches from the Atlantic to the Red Sea, and then skips to Syria/Iraq and then skips again to Afghanistan and Pakistan and into Western China. Millions of people want to escape drought, famine, and war and willing to risk a 1/23 chance of dying at sea to get somewhere where life has future.

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