‘We bring individuals all together, and this magic occurs when individuals are around food that all of a unexpected they sort of find that they have so much more in typical with each other.’
Hundreds of refugees popular Thanksgiving last weekend exterior Washington, D.C., at the Ethiopian Community Development Council, a refugee resettlement firm.
How did an Ethiopian neighborhood not-for-profit come to assistance refugees from Afghanistan, Congo, Eritrea, El Salvador and Ukraine?
ECDC began in 1983 to aid Ethiopians displaced duetothefactthat of conflict and starvation, however it is now one of 9 U.S. resettlement companies that partner with the United Nations. Since last year, the not-for-profit has helped nearly 1,600 refugees start brand-new lives in Northern Virginia, 95% of them Afghans.
That’s how my household heard of the company.
After Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021 when the United States withdrew our military from Afghanistan, my spouse desired to assistance with the humanitarian crisis. As an editor with a defense specialist, Bob is close with his Afghan American associates and pals. Including them in our lives has just enriched our household.
Fall of Afghanistan, fall of Vietnam
In 2014, after working in Kabul for 6 months at a U.S. military base, Bob had assisted Afghan interpreters get visas to immigrate to America. When Afghanistan’s capital city fell 7 years lateron, these brand-new Americans struggled over their vulnerability attempting to get their own households out, and we struggled with them.
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Bob discovered the Ethiopian company near our house in Northern Virginia and began offering to aid choice up refugee households from the airport. As he came house with stories, I understood he was on a objective and wouldn’t stay a volunteer long. By this time last year, ECDC was including personnel to offer with the frustrating number of arriving Afghan households. And Bob quit his full-time modifying task to work for the Ethiopian center as a realestate planner for these brand-new exiles.
That is who Bob Elston is. He would haveactually done it even if he weren’t married to me, a refugee-turned-American whose household ranaway Vietnam at the fall of Saigon almost 5 years ago when I was 8. But I do believe of my daddy, whose last task priorto he passed away in 1991 was director of a refugee firm for the Vietnamese American neighborhood in Phoenix.
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‘After 2 years of hibernation, all of a abrupt we were back’
Sunday, Bob assisted with the Thanksgiving event and came house with more stories about his coworkers at the Ethiopian Community Development Council and the refugees they’re assisting. I was sorry I couldn’t make it and desired to talk with his manager. I desired to understand: Why did hundreds of individuals program up for an American Thanksgiving that most of them didn’t understand anything about?
Sarah Zullo, head of ECDC’s regional branch, informed me this is the 10th year of the firm’s Thanksgiving fest however that it hadactually been online for 2 years duetothefactthat of COVID-19.
“After 2 years of hibernation, all of a abrupt we were back,” she stated. “The desire for the individuals to come out, to see individuals, to be around individuals” was a huge draw.
The number of individuals in participation was so frustrating that Sunday’s Thanksgiving broke into 2 back-to-back events for more than 500 refugees. About 150 volunteers assisted serve not just the standard American Thanksgiving meal however likewise Central American yucca frenchfries next to mashed potatoes and gravy, turkey inthemiddleof lentils and conventional meals from Afghanistan, Africa and Ukraine.
“It’s our own Thanksgiving,” said Alexandra Hernandez-Pardo, the firm’s resource advancement supervisor. “It’s what an global neighborhood Thanksgiving looks like.”
What sticks with Zullo after a years of Thanksgiving events at the refugee company?
“It’s the one location where we’re not going to talk about faith, we’re not going to talk about politics, we’re not going to talk about ethnicbackground. It’s simply we bring individuals all together, and this magic occurs when individuals are around food that all of a unexpected they sort of find that they have so much more in typical with each other,” she stated. “To me, that’s what Thanksgiving is all about.”
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What about Ethiopian refugees?
Like my otherhalf, Zullo began at ECDC as a volunteer in 2010, when she was on a student visa from Ethiopia. Studying criminology to be a attorney, rather she remained with th