HENRICO: COUNTY OF REFUGE – How support agency ReEstablish Richmond helps newcomers adapt, thrive

Jyoti Rimal was born and raised in Nepal in a rudimentary refugee camp.

While her family originated in Nepal, generations earlier, it had settled in neighboring Bhutan. Disputes arose when the Bhutanese government objected to the growing population from Nepal, and the situation became violent, displacing tens of thousands of those Nepali/Bhutanese people.

Rimal was nine years old when her family was resettled to Henrico County in 2010 with the help of the Commonwealth Catholic Charities.

While she and her family were relieved to be in a new, safe place, and the family could put down roots, Rimal’s memories of being a refugee were often challenging and difficult.

On the family’s long flight to the U.S., they could not stomach the food because it was not familiar. They felt their resettlement case worker was not helpful enough, and Rimal remembers their apartment with no furniture that smelled bad because the place was just unfamiliar. She also felt alienated at school and was bullied.

“But after 10 months, more people [from Bhutan] started getting resettled, and there was a whole community within that apartment complex of Nepali speaking people,” Rimal said. “So, it did get better.”

Rimal blossomed with ESL classes at school, and worked hard in her studies, graduating from Tucker High School. She transferred from Reynolds Community College, earned a degree in sociology from Virginia Commonwealth University and now is pursuing a master’s degree in social work at VCU as she works as a client engagement coordinator at the refugee support nonprofit ReEstablish Richmond.

“I realized that the things that I was facing when we first resettled here, those were still present. Those were still the barriers that people were facing,” Rimal said. “When I'm at my parents’ small Nepali grocery store, my dad is always helping somebody with paperwork that they want help with, or if they don't understand something or with transportation barriers and stuff. So, I realized that there was still a lack of access and equity to healthcare and stuff like that, with a lot of potential barriers that refugees like me were facing.”

That’s why Rimal went into social work.

“All the social workers in my life had really big influences. That why I work at ReEstablish Richmond,” Rimal said. “ReEstablish Richmond was actually just beginning to start as it was just founded in 2010 when we resettled here. I was a part of the World Refugee Day that they used to host when I was a little kid.”

In her current role with the nonprofit, Rimal helps clients navigate essential services that they need help with, such as health and wellness – mostly refugees from Afghanistan, the Congo, Sudan and Spanish-speaking countries in turmoil.

“If they need to be connected to free clinics, if they're unsure if they need help getting medical information. We help them navigate transportation and master transportation independence,” said Rimal who said limited bus routes are a barrier for many newly arrived refugees to access employment and services. “Some of the areas where our clients live don't have access to bus stops, so they can't really use the bus, so they don't really have any [transportation] options.”

Limited to driving a car is a challenge when language and access to jobs is a barrier, Rimal said.

Her duties include matching clients with English tutors who can go to the home of a refugee facing a transportation barrier or to an English class or helping them identify English classes near them. Rimal wishes ReEstablish Richmond had more capacity to offer more economic and empowerment-based work, to help refugees get better paying jobs.

A variety of services for refugees and those who support them

When members of the Afzali family in Glen Allen arrived in Henrico County as refugees from Afghanistan after the Operation Allies Welcome airlift evacuation in 2021, they went to the CCC for basic assistance in their resettlement. They had no credit history and no credentials.

After they got stable housing and jobs, the CCC connected the Afzalis to ReEstablish Richmond for more essential support. The nonprofit’s mission is to fill service gaps for resettled refugee communities and help them thrive in their new homes, while also supporting the people and faith groups that assist them.

ReEstablish Richmond is one of the crucial nonprofit organizations in Henrico County that have a key role in advancing refugees’ lives through education and other services. Its many services aim to help those vulnerable newcomers thrive.

“They gave us driver course,” said Waleed Afzali, 32, a father of two young children who worked in banking in his country but here works installing soundproofing materials in buildings. “They helped us get our driver lessons and our drivers permits. They have classes about how to control your monthly finances or how you can buy house. I have taken classes like that and I'm still taking classes.”

The young couple who live in Glen Allen was ready to advance professionally, and they knew that education was key to that climb.

And then the Afzali family connected with Sheeba Adli, ReEstablish Richmond client engagement coordinator.

Adli’s one-on-one help made an incredible impact on 28-year-old Sajia Afzali’s life. Adli introduced the Afzalis to a Virginia Commonwealth University staff member at the English Language Program so the couple could take high level language classes to prepare them to complete their degrees.

VCU, along with a credential translation service, evaluated Sajia’s university transcripts from Afghanistan and now, with some credits from her home country, she is mastering that important coursework setting her on her way toward a pre-dental bachelor’s degree. This semester she is taking her first college-level biology class and working as a dental assistant.

“I feel good,” Sajia said. “But it's a lot of things to do. We have to work hard to achieve our goal. We passed the first hard thing. We came here without anything. Now I'm happy to have everything for living. But, I work harder to find a good job or work with my kids. They grow, they achieve their goals. And also me, my husband. But we have a long way, and we have to be very patient to achieve the thing that we want.”

ReEstablish Richmond Executive Director Kate Ayers compared refugee resettlement in Henrico County, in terms of its population of about 335,000 with Pittsburgh, population 303,255. But in contrast to other locations around the state and country, refugee and immigrant advocacy organizations here have a positive and diplomatic relationship with Henrico County facilitating coordination and access to services to help refugees thrive.

The settlement agencies most intense support for refugees is focused on the first 90 days after arrival. Other services are offered for up to five years. A recent report showed that nonprofits like ReEstablish Richmond were essential to helping immigrants integrate and thrive in Virginia, as there were many barriers to acculturating and thriving.

Adli’s work is intense and time consuming. The organization has grown over its decade long existence and now has a total income of $634,602 to serve the many refugees continue acclimating, with foundations providing the biggest source of donations – 40% of the organization’s total income. Individual donations are the second biggest source of income at 32%. The nonprofit experienced an operating deficit, its annual report states, utilizing a reserve fund to stay afloat.

“It’s a very big achievement that we are continuously helping,” Adli said. “We have very limited funding and also limit with our team members, but still, we are trying our best, we are working more than our capacity.”

Ayers said volunteer engagement, newcomer networking and community education are also critical to ReEstablish Richmond’s mission, with the 2021 Operation Allies Welcome evacuation in Afghanistan shining kilowatts of light on the organization’s significant positive impact on newcomers.

“We experienced these bare bones [operation] to [an] explosion of growth as an organization with lots of different funding coming in lots of different ways, between Covid and the evacuation specifically wrapped around Afghanistan withdrawal,” Ayers said.

The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan in 2021 and large-scale resettlement program, resulted in ReEstablish Richmond scaling up its programs.

“Reestablish Richmond is not federally funded, so we're trying to assess what size we can support, relying on mostly local fundraising efforts, community foundations and non-governmental money,” Ayers said. “It is hard to raise money for larger programs and to scale your programing unless you have a larger funder coming in at the table.”

With a current budget around $750,000, Ayers thinks ReEstablish Richmond could consistently benefit from as much as a $1 million budget, allowing it to more effectively serve the community that needs its services.

“We could scale our programing and the areas that I see that it really needs to scale as English language support,” Ayers said. “We're doing it now and the outcomes have been really, really strong. Our partnership with Henrico County Adult Education, with our role providing wraparound services, making sure people are registered, with transportation and childcare so that they can actually get to classes, when we provide that, the outcomes and learning that we're seeing are far outpacing regular adult ed classrooms for English language learners. We need more of that.”

Ayers also wishes ReEstablish Richmond had a physical address that staff could use every day, as programming and transportation planning for her clients as very time-consuming duties for her staff. That hub would also be a location to hold its classes. She thinks a space in the Regency Mall would be ideal.

“My ultimate dream would be to be more of a formal hub of connecting and resourcing all the things that are going on at different organizations,” Ayers said. “Sometimes things do get duplicated because somebody is looking for help and they're going to ask multiple people because that's what you do when you need help with something, you might make ask different organizations for the same help, and whoever can help you first is who you go with.”

Key to the organization and its clients’ success is the trust it has developed.

“The people that we have on our team are incredibly committed, and they believe in the work,“ Ayers said. “The connections with the community and other organizations and the ripple effects of those connections are really hard to measure but add up significantly for people.”

This article was reported through a fellowship supported by the Lilly Endowment and administered by the Chronicle of Philanthropy to expand coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits. The Henrico Citizen is solely responsible for all content.