Many of us are feeling frustrated with what’s going on in the world these days. We want to affect real change but feel helpless.

Now here is a chance to do something that will make a real, long-lasting difference.

A week ago in mid-february, we decided to "Adopt a refugee family", through Hearts4Refugees (http://www.hearts4refugees.org), and do whatever we could to help them get re-settled. 

Close to 13,000 Syrian refugee families have been accepted into the United States. We now know one of them.

Meet the Mamad family.  They are a family of 7 from Aleppo, Syria.

Mohamad (48), Mazkin (41) and their five children - Catherine (22), Roberto (21), Bassam (19), Hossam (16), Mamo (10) fled civil war in Syria and bombings in Aleppo.

They left behind their floushiring grocery business, beautiful home, friends, family, colleges and schools and made their way to Turkey where they lived in a refugee camp for 4 years.

As you can imagine, times were really tough but they did apply for refugee status in the United States and after  2+ years of rigorous US Govt. vetting and interviews, they were accepted to come to the United States.

We spent a day with the family on our first visit and were welcomed into their fold with love.

They have been settled in El Cajon, just east of San Diego, CA and are now making the best of a difficult situation. 

Despite of all the trouble they went through, they were positive. Mohamad said to us, "all I want to do is get a job, work hard to support my family, get my kids education back on track and start to build a life in the US".

Their primary goal is to find good, solid work. They have full legal employment status for the United States and are authorized to work anywere.

They've been here for 6 months and are trying to learn English as fast as they can. Mohamad has a part-time job working 16 hours a week with a construction contractor. Catherine is working part-time in a restaurant and Roberto (named after Roberto Carlos, the Brazillian soccer star!) is working part-time at a recycling facility.

Some of the things we found out after we spoke to them:

- International Rescue Committee (IRC) flies the family to the US but the family has to pay back the cost of the flight tickets (over $7000) in an interest free loan over 3 years.

- The rent for the 3 bedroom rental apartment they were placed in is $1900 a month. Given their part time jobs, they are barely making rent.

We would love to be able to assist the family with rent for a minimum of one year, to give them time and peace-of-mind to adjust to life here as well as to ensure the older boys are able to stay in school.

The family also needs 2 used cars to get back and forth from their jobs and to look for better full-time work.

We will be handling all funds on behalf of the Mamads to purchase the cars, pay off their IRC loan and put towards their rent.

We are helping the Mamads settle into our country and stand up on their feet. We hope you can join us and contribute.

Please share on all your social accounts so this gets to all those willing to help.

Thanks!

Jennifer & Vikrant Batra

About us: We are a family of four living in Carlsbad, CA. Vikrant works for HP in San Diego.

We were introduced to the Mamad family through Hearts4Refugees (http://www.hearts4refugees.org) and the Syrian Community Network  (http://www.syriancommunitynetwork.org)