Nonprofits & Social Services

Michigan prepares for Syrian refugees

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By ROHITHA EDARA
Capital News Service
LANSING — Michigan nonprofit organizations are preparing for an influx of Syrian refugees after the U.S. Senate rejected a bill that would stop them from entering the country. “We are expecting a new wave of refugees, especially that of Syrians,” said Ken Fouty, community outreach coordinator at Lutheran Social Services of Michigan based in Detroit. “We anticipate that it will happen in the summer.”
About 100 Syrian refugees were resettled by his organization in 2015. It is prepared to take about 300 more in response to the refugee crisis in Syria, he said. Michigan took in 180 refugees in total in 2015, said Erica Quealy, marketing specialist at  the  Department of Health and Human Services.

Education

Refugees increase, face education, language hurdles

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By KATIE AMANN
Capital News Service
LANSING — The world has a growing number of displaced people driven from their homes because of conflict, more than ever before, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. For the 86 percent of them in developing countries, that means increasingly limited access to quality education. “Education is vital in restoring hope and dignity to young people driven from their homes,” the agency said. But even refugees living in Michigan may face serious obstacles in obtaining education, experts say. Zeina Hamade, a community outreach coordinator at the U.S. Committee for Refugees-Detroit, said refugee children “are not able to attend school because of the political situation in their countries, but they also must put their education on pause, usually for a few years, while they are waiting to be resettled.”
In Hamade’s experience, children who are resettled in Michigan “are continually trying to catch up on their education.”
And Erin Blackwell, a program coordinator for the West Michigan Refugee Education and Cultural Center in Grand Rapids, said the children she sees have been exposed to trauma and interrupted schooling.