More than 300 friends and supporters gathered with new Vermonters from Afghanistan and several other countries on Oct. 17 at the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center to celebrate a year of refugee resettlement in southern Vermont.
The event was coordinated by the local office of the Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC), a national refugee resettlement organization that opened the Multicultural Community Center in Brattleboro in October 2021. Less than three months later, in January 2022, ECDC and partner organizations World Learning/School for International Training and Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation (BDCC), began welcoming refugees to the SIT campus, where they had up to three months of housing while taking English and cultural orientation classes.
Dr. Tsehaye Teferra, president and CEO of ECDC, called the joint effort “a new opportunity and an ideal partnership. … I hope this kind of collaboration will continue and serve as a role model in other cities.”
Since January, more than 100 refugees, most of them from Afghanistan, have migrated to southern Vermont thanks in large part to a massive volunteer effort coordinated by ECDC with local churches and community organizations and more than 200 individuals.
Local partners include St. Michaels’ Interfaith Refugee Ministry, the Rotary Club, the Beloved Community Group, Brattleboro Area Jewish Community, UCC Group, the Spanish-Speaking Group, Rockingham Group, Deerfield Valley New Neighbors Project, as well as smaller support teams for the ArtLords, the Sewing Team, and half-a-dozen other refugee households.
Thanks to this broad community and organizational support, most of the refugees have found long-term housing and jobs, and enrolled in school and classes as they settle in to their new community.
“This is a wonderful opportunity for cross-cultural engagement, which is really what SIT and World Learning are all about,” said Tim Rivera, World Learning senior advisor for innovation and strategy. “While so many of our new Afghan neighbors are busy learning our language, the English language, our culture, it’s a useful reminder that it is also incumbent on all of us to learn from our neighbors about their history, their culture, their experience.”
The October event included a festive afternoon of demonstrations, displays, food, and remarks, with the strength of community bonds and friendship on full display.
Kamila is among several refugees who announced plans to open a local food business.
Guests enjoyed a variety of Afghan dishes prepared by the Afghan chefs.
From left, Abdullah, Meetra, Negina and Zuhra, four of the five members of the ArtLords currently living in Brattleboro, work on a painting representing Afghans in the United States.
SIT Graduate alum Joe Wiah, director of ECDC’s Multicultural Community Center, said he was proud of how Vermont has supported refugees. “We have provided a friendly, supportive environment with our welcoming, small-town approach. It is our experience that newcomers have benefited from more generous and responsive services in Vermont than in most U.S. states.”
World Learning’s Tim Rivera (left) talks with SIT staff member Cynthia Rebelo, one of the community members co-sponsoring a family from Guatemala.
Community members enjoyed exhibits of artwork, clothing, robotics, and toys created by new Vermonters.
Dr. Teferra said the collaboration between ECDC and World Learning/SIT “is a new opportunity and an ideal partnership. … I hope this kind of collaboration will continue and serve as a role model in other cities.”
Pham Thi Thu Hang is a graduate of Ho Chi Minh City University of Education, where she studied English language with a concentration in translation. As a Vietnamese teacher with a love for language, she helps guide students on their learning journey not in language but also in Vietnam’s rich culture. She also serves as homestay coordinator, assisting students in communicating effectively with their homestay parents and siblings.In addition, she is responsible for facilitating and promoting cross-cultural communication between SIT students and Vietnamese students by organizing intercultural exchange workshops and meetings. She has been involved in outdoor activities to help students gaining cultural experience and peer learning.
Latin America delegates hear how local effort is breaking new ground
BRATTLEBORO, Vermont—A U.S. State Department-sponsored delegation of 10 migration professionals from Central and South America came to Brattleboro recently to learn about a landmark program that is changing the paradigm for refugee resettlement in the United States.
As part of the International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP) administered by World Learning, the delegation included representatives from government and non-governmental organizations in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, and Venezuela.
The theme of their month-long fact-finding tour, which takes them throughout the United States, is Migration in the Americas: A Regional Project for the Western Hemisphere. One of the State Department’s goals for the program—to explore public-private resettlement programs—brought them to Brattleboro.
Since January, southern Vermont has welcomed more than 100 refugees from Afghanistan through a unique partnership between Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC), World Learning/School for International Training (SIT), and Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation (BDCC). This is only the second refugee resettlement location in Vermont and the largest resettlement in a rural area of the state.
In less than six months, 103 of the 104 new Vermonters have found long-term housing, 80 percent of all job-seekers are employed, and the adults are enrolled in critical English-language and cultural orientation classes.
“Based on what we’ve heard from ECDC, as well as co-sponsorship advocates nationally, the success we have had here is unparalleled,” Joel Colony, vice president for external engagement at World Learning, told the IVLP delegates.
Breaking new ground
The extraordinary results are credited to short-term housing provided to all incoming refugees on the SIT campus, and ECDC’s community co-sponsorship approach in which seven to 10 local residents team up to support newly arrived refugees. More than half of the Afghan families who have found permanent housing have done so through direct assistance from the co-sponsorship teams.
This community co-sponsorship model also relies on participation from local organizations, including churches and service organizations, that help weave together a safety net for refugees, many of whom are emerging from traumatic circumstances and have left behind homes and loved ones in their bid for safety and security.
Founded by Ethiopian immigrants in 1983, the local lead agency, ECDC, is one of nine refugee organizations that contract with the U.S. government for resettlement, and the only one that is led by immigrants, according to Joe Wiah, director of the ECDC Multicultural Community Center in Brattleboro.
An SIT alum who worked with refugees in Africa for 30 years, Wiah was named to the ECDC position last fall, just a few months before the first Afghans began arriving. “We quickly learned that the kind of refugee resettlement that was happening in other parts of the country—where an agency does almost everything—was not going to work here,” he told the IVLP delegates.
To bring this idea to town managers, police, and policymakers in a rural area that was new to refugee resettlement, Wiah said, “we needed organizations that had been here for decades to be part of the process. There was also SIT, an academic institution with long international experience with academic affairs and teaching English to beginners.”
Dr. Sophia Howlett, president of SIT, said the partnership was a logical fit. SIT’s founding organization, the Experiment in International Living, participated in refugee education in Southeast Asia starting in 1979 as part of the largest refugee resettlement effort in history. Today. SIT offers undergraduate and graduate programs that focus on migration, including a master’s degree in Jordan and Uganda in humanitarian assistance and crisis intervention.
“We would like to connect our programs with what we’re doing here on campus so we can provide support on how to work with refugees,” Howlett told the delegates.
Building a network of support
Although there are a handful of other rural resettlement efforts in the United States, this is the only one that includes a formal partnership with a higher education institution. When they arrive, refugees live in temporary housing on the SIT campus for up to 90 days and enroll in SIT’s New Vermonter Education Program to learn English and U.S. cultural norms.
SIT’s unique approach to language learning also helps to ease learners into a new culture. “People bring the richness of their language and cultural histories, and that should be used in a language class,” said Dr. Leslie Turpin, chair of the MA in TESOL program at SIT. Turpin was part of a group of 12 SIT professors, most of them retired or emeriti, who volunteered to teach classes on campus while the Afghan refugees were living there.
Through classes, shared meals, and short-term housing, the first wave of Afghan refugees had an opportunity to bond with each other and with local residents, building resiliency and a sense of community. More than 200 community members and 17 local churches and service organizations are volunteering with the resettlement effort.
I was expecting to go to a hotel or temporary housing, but fortunately we had the chance to come here to SIT. I was amazed about the services we received.
Ebrahim
Ebrahim worked with the U.S. Embassy in Kabul before the Taliban re-took control of Afghanistan in August 2021. He hid in Kabul for two months before fleeing with his wife and two young children to Vermont via Islamabad, Doha, Philadelphia, and a military base in New Jersey.
“I was expecting to go to a hotel or temporary housing, but fortunately we had the chance to come here to SIT. I was amazed about the services we received. To be honest, I didn’t expect to receive meals and food. I expected I would have to go to work to get food. It wasn’t like that. ECDC and SIT and World Learning advocated for us, and we had the chance to receive services that helped us to resettle smoothly,” he said.
Today, Ebrahim’s family has an apartment and a car. He works for ECDC and is also interested in helping local residents understand more about Afghanistan and the backgrounds of their new neighbors.
“The initiatives that ECDC and SIT took to resettle refugees—the co-sponsorship, the families and volunteers who helped us even beyond the core services that ECDC provided for us, the advocacy by World Learning, SIT, and ECDC—all of it has made support for receiving refugees so high here,” he told the IVLP delegates.
Johanna Rodriguez Tencio, a regional manager with Costa Rican Immigration Police, commented: “It’s clear that wherever possible, government and civil society need to come together to support and guide human mobility.”
Another delegate, Vanessa Lizeth Bolanos Yepez, immigration coordinator at Quito’s airport in Ecuador, asked if there is special support for mothers with infants and young children.
Turpin said two of the most well-attended classes on campus brought health professionals from the local hospital to speak directly with the women, and ECDC continues to work closely with the hospital to provide culturally sensitive support.
ECDC assigns each family a caseworker, who assist them through the resettlement process, including accessing appropriate federal and state benefits, and works with them to find answers to myriad questions and challenges.
The organization has opened a new community center near downtown Brattleboro. English classes are taught there as well as at some job sites that employ groups of refugees. The center also has a sewing room where women can gather to make traditional clothing and learn to offer tailoring services to the community.
The center also houses bicycle safety and repair classes for the many Afghans who rely on bicycles as their only means of transportation.
A group of Afghan young people has received a small grant to run a week-long summer camp where Afghan children can be exposed to their language and culture and non-Afghan children can learn more about it.
A new community blooms
Throughout town, there are signs that the resettlement efforts are taking root. Many downtown businesses still have posters in the window saying “welcome” in English, Dari, and Pashto—the result of an impromptu effort among several Afghans and their Vermont friends during the Nowruz holiday in March.
Five Afghan artists who were part of the famous Art Lords muralists in their home country are commissioning public art projects and working with the Brattleboro Museum and Art Center on an exhibit to recreate and display murals that were destroyed by the Taliban.
Most communities are not this way. What is the essence of your community to be so hospitable?
Carlos Alejandro Soberanis Toledo, Guatemala City urban planner
At Brattleboro Union High School, a young robotics champion who arrived from Afghanistan four months ago speaking little English delivered the commencement address and graduated with honors. And last spring, school garden coordinators collaborated with a local farm to grow two culturally relevant crops and include Afghan dishes in student cooking projects.
What makes this area so welcoming, Guatemala City urban planner Carlos Alejandro Soberanis Toledo wanted to know. “Most communities are not this way. What is the essence of your community to be so hospitable?”
“With the presence of World Learning, this town is used to interfacing with other cultures,” responded local resident Rick Wheeler. “As a resident of the Brattleboro area, I am tremendously proud.”
BDCC Programs Director Jennifer Stromsten concurred. “Here in this tiny, tiny town in this tiny, tiny state, we are doing something that is remarkable for the U.S.: We are welcoming refugees into a rural community. This is a ground-up, not a top-down initiative.”
With a shrinking and aging population, Brattleboro has a declining workforce, Stromsten said. In the past decade, the county lost 20 percent of its labor force. “But we have a lot of jobs—the remaining manufacturing sector is very strong. What we lack is people.”
Here in this tiny, tiny town in this tiny, tiny state, we are doing something that is remarkable for the U.S.: We are welcoming refugees into a rural community.
BDCC Programs Director Jennifer Stromsten
Describing the region as progressive and “politically forward,” Stromsten also noted that the area lacks diversity. “We have not benefited from the diversification that America, in general, has benefited from, but we need to, because the American labor force is more multilingual and multi-ethnic every day.”
For those reasons, BDCC began to focus on migration as one solution, even before the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. “We knew we could do this with SIT and all of the volunteers and professors within this organization, and the larger volunteer network of citizens and knowledgeable people who have a shared cultural expectation that opening ourselves to the world is a good thing.”
Stromsten admits there are still challenges, but believes that by pulling together the community will surmount them. “Together, we are developing a model. What we’re doing here can work all over the place.”
“A remarkable aspect is the positive attitude of the host community in Vermont,” said Eloisa Elizabeth Ulloa Lucero, an immigration control analyst with the government of Ecuador. “So many of them work as volunteers to offer help to the refugee citizens. Getting to know this place was an excellent experience.”
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The U.S. Department of State administers the IVLP in cooperation with a group of nonprofit organizations based in Washington, D.C., including World Learning. More than 500 IVLP participants have become heads of state or government and thousands of others have become leaders in their respective fields.
How SIT TESOL experts rallied to help Afghan refugees get settled in Vermont
By Beatriz C. Fantini
Experiential education has been at the core of all World Learning programs since the start of the organization in 1932. Whether it’s spending a summer abroad, attending a semester of studies in Peru, or participating in one of our graduate programs here in Vermont, the emphasis has always been on experiencing, participating, reflection, and discussion.
This same approach was evident in a recent training program for our new neighbors, a group of Afghan refugees.
When it was announced that nearly 100 Afghan refugees were to arrive in Brattleboro, and that SIT and World Learning had partnered with the Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) to help resettle them, a group of professors from SIT met to see how we could help to orient and prepare the refugees for life in the United States.
The group of three professors emeriti, two retired professors, and two current SIT faculty members began meeting in late November to develop plans to provide the refugees with English instruction and cultural orientation, two areas in which SIT has been engaged over many years.
Being part of this group was the highlight of my retirement. In this new effort, I was going to work once again with five of my former students of decades ago, currently all professional educators, and one colleague. We were all enthusiastically engaged in this project and learning together once again as we worked through the process.
We decided to run a 10-week pilot project with the new arrivals to test our plan and, if ECDC agreed, we would then continue beyond that time. Our newly formed group met regularly until the holidays, and then resumed again in January. We learned that the refugees would begin arriving in Vermont in January, and the program began on January 24.
About two weeks before their arrival, we were told that the refugee families included children, some of whom would be arriving with both parents and some just their mothers. What to do? SIT never had a daycare center and our campus was not set up for children.
We established play centers in the back of the classrooms where parents would be learning. … Based on our experience in the refugee camps of Southeast Asia, we felt confident this would work well, and we were not wrong.
The solution was to replicate classrooms like those we had established years before in Thailand, when we ran refugee camps there. We established play centers in the back of the classrooms where parents would be learning. To keep the children occupied and entertained, we created positions of “childminders” – volunteers who engaged the children in the room while the adults were in class. The volunteers who took on this role were a former child psychologist and former elementary school teachers. Based on our experience in the refugee camps of Southeast Asia, we felt confident this would work well, and we were not wrong.
Recruiting teachers, however, was not an easy task. Although there are many graduates of the SIT TESOL program in the Brattleboro area, we did not know of their availability or whether they would be willing to volunteer to teach for 10 weeks without pay. Happily, we were able to engage enough individuals to teach the entire the group of 92 refugees, some of them children, at various levels of proficiency.
Throughout the entire experience, we were once again living the motto upon which The Experiment in International Living was founded 90 years ago: “Expect the unexpected.” As the program began, we still did not know how many students to expect or when. We had no advance information either about who they were: men, women, children, couples, ages. We also did not know their languages or language levels.
Throughout the entire experience, we were once again living the motto upon which The Experiment in International Living was founded 90 years ago: ‘Expect the unexpected.’
The refugees were arriving from U.S. military bases, where they had been housed since their rapid evacuation from Afghanistan in August, so we assumed they had some knowledge of English. But without specific information, our plans had to be constantly revised.
Meeting the students was indeed a linguistic challenge for them and for us! Several had good English proficiency, some knew limited English, others knew none at all. And to add to this challenge, several were not literate in their languages or had never been to school. For all our sessions, then, we relied on an interpreter and we used our Google Translate app.
Initially, most students were quite shy. Many had no idea where they were. Having been told they were going to a university, the rural SIT campus seemed to them more like a camp than a university setting. Classes were held Tuesdays through Thursdays for two hours each day. On Mondays, they had a session on U.S. cultural orientation to give context to the language classes.
As the program began, we still did not know how many students to expect or when. We had no advance information either about who they were: men, women, children, couples, ages. We also did not know their languages or language levels.
For the first several weeks we did not know how many students would attend classes. Once we thought we had a stable number of students, a new couple might arrive and show up for class the next day. This became a frequent occurrence, but the teachers were able to integrate the new arrivals without much difficulty. Fortunately, the teachers were all experienced, they were all trained at SIT, including a former director of the TESOL program.
In the beginning, it was difficult for us to learn names that were unfamiliar to us, and masks did not help. Eventually, however, we began to remember names, who was married to whom, who was the parent to which child, and so forth. As the weeks went by, our new neighbors began to communicate better, to feel comfortable in their new surroundings, and they even began to refer to their dorms as “home.”
The challenges for our new neighbors will certainly continue for some time. Most of the refugees are now living in Brattleboro, Bennington, or Bellows Falls. They are now entrusted to the kindness and welcoming attitude of others in this area.
As time went on, some of the men started to miss class as they secured jobs in the area. Families began to move into town, and some of the children began to attend local schools.
Although we have now finished this pilot project, the challenges for our new neighbors will certainly continue for some time. Most of the refugees are now living in Brattleboro, Bennington, or Bellows Falls. They are now entrusted to the kindness and welcoming attitude of others in this area.
Although our volunteer group has finished its task, we still get together to reflect on the process and how we were challenged to use our skills and our imaginations to create a program and an experience with our Afghan friends for their new life here in Vermont.
Our deep and heartfelt thanks go to Jeryl, Jamie, Jeannie, Bill, Bonnie, Gloria, Kate, Ray, Andy, Jonathan, Lanie, and Jessie. You have given our new neighbors a good basis on which to feel more comfortable in this area and to keep learning English. And thanks also to Cheryl, Pam, and Nancy, the childminders. Without them, the adults would not have had an opportunity to participate.
For us, the seamless team, the experience will remain in our minds and hearts for a long time. We hope we gave our new neighbors the tools they need to make Vermont their new home.
Beatriz Fantini is SIT professor emerita.
BRATTLEBORO, Vermont—New and long-time Vermonters came together with friends and supporters March 20 at World Learning and the School for International Training for a celebration of Nowruz, a secular new year celebrated in Afghanistan, Iran, much of Central Asia, and beyond. Held during the vernal equinox, Nowruz—which means “new day”—celebrates rebirth and renewal and welcomes spring.
More than 150 Afghan refugees, community volunteers, government officials and other supporters attended the joyful celebration, which featured traditional Afghan foods, music, poetry reading and dancing. During the afternoon, kites bobbed in the wind above campus as children and young men took part in the holiday kite-making and flying tradition. There was also egg and henna painting provided by members of Brattleboro’s Asian Cultural Center.
“This is a wonderful opportunity to honor an Afghan tradition while at the same time welcoming new Vermonters to our community,” said Dr. Sophia Howlett, president of School for International Training.
Starting in December, World Learning and SIT have partnered with the Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC) to welcome and help resettle nearly 100 Afghans who fled their country during the Taliban takeover last summer.
Noting that World Learning was founded 90 years ago this year, CEO Carol Jenkins said the resettlement effort aligns with the organization’s belief “that intercultural engagement expands world views and cultivates understanding and respect. It’s how we recognize the humanity in one another.”
Joe Wiah, director of ECDC’s Brattleboro office, thanked the Afghans as well as the hundreds of local volunteers and co-sponsorship groups who have stepped forward to help with the resettlement: “This celebration of the new year marks a new life and new beginning as we collectively start a new life together as a community in Southern Vermont.” He also thanked State Refugee Director Tracy Dolan and Gov. Phil Scott for their support.
Dolan, who was present at the celebration, spoke to the new Vermonters. “Today you are in Vermont, and I know you are in Afghanistan,” she said. “I know you are worried about your parents, your children, your aunts and your uncles. They are in our hearts too. I’m sorry they are not here. We think about them too. Thank you for coming to Vermont. You are lucky to be here, and we are lucky to have you.”
In a recorded video, Congressman Peter Welch also welcomed the Afghans and said Vermonters are excited to have them here.
Ebrahim, an Afghan refugee who spoke at the event, said he and others are eager to turn the challenges of resettlement into opportunities. “We have been warmly welcomed by our American friends and that means a lot to us. … This is just the beginning, and we know we have a long journey ahead integrating into our new society. This new challenge will pass, but the Afghan Vermonters will not forget your generosity, your support, and your kindness,” said Ebrahim.
Since their arrival starting in January, the Afghans have been housed temporarily on the SIT campus, where SIT faculty and former faculty have provided classes in English and U.S. cultural orientation. At the same time, ECDC is helping them to find housing and employment in southern Vermont and to navigate government processes.
Other local nonprofit organizations are assisting with the resettlement effort, while ECDC has set up partnerships with faith and community groups as co-sponsors of Afghan families and individuals to help them navigate the challenges of a new country.
Most of the Afghan families have now moved off campus and into communities throughout the area, enrolled their children in school, and most households have found employment in full-time jobs with benefits. Most also plan to continue with English classes and local community activities.