Islamic Civic Society of America

Welcome! We are a group of families that are working together as a Circle of Welcome. Our efforts are being supported by Lutheran Social Services and the Islamic Civic Society of America to help welcome and support a new Afghan refugee family move to Minnesota, you can learn more here: https://www.lssmn.org/services/refugees 

 

Our group has been blessed to get to know this family of three who recently fled Afghanistan and have made Minnesota their new home. A mother, with son and daughter have been provided a safe and clean apartment in Minneapolis to call their new home. In their journey to get to safety, that family was struck by a powerful bomb blast. While everyone in the family survived, the mother was severely injured and faces many years of recovery. She is now in 24 hour care while her two children (23 and 14) strive to build a life here and visit their mother every chance they get. They are facing incredible challenges to stabilize life her, finding work, learning English, worrying about family here and back in Afghanistan.  It will be a tremendous challenge for this family to meet their rent and monthly bills, while learning English, going to high school, and providing care to their mother.  Believe us when we say that the family is so kind, grateful, and have had to have great faith that things will work out. 

We really need your help. Please help us the raise the funds to ensure that in the next few months, they can make their rent and therefore have a safe place to stay. Our government made a promise the the Afghan immigrants ensuring they had rent covered for 6 months, time is running out and they will need to find help to be safe. We sincerely ask each of you to consider donating to help them cover rent and utilities while they do everything they can do to build a life here in Minnesota. We could not have asked for better people to come to our community - we are the lucky ones.

About ourselves, we are group of four families - Michael and Michelle Van Keulen; Rebekah Pratt and Abel Knochel; Ruby Smith and Marouan Ben Larbi; and Stephen Mitrione and Shana Kaplow. While our group of families will be supporting this Afghan refugee family settle to their new home in many ways, we know that relocation is hard, including financially. We ask that you please consider helping us in our goal to create a fund of at least $15,000 to support this family in their first year of resettlement.

 

The money raised through this "Go Fund Me" will go directly to the Islamic Civic Society of America as our fiscal host and then all of these donations will go directly to the Afghan refugee family, to pay for their living expenses. Thank you for your support and your generosity to welcome to this new family into our community!