When our partner at Human Rights First told us about Malya V., she was about to be reunited with her three children after ten long years apart, and the family was in need of EVERYTHING. Malya, a refugee from Haiti, had been a rape victim there, and her husband had been beaten to death trying to stop the rape. Her experience drove her to become an activist for women’s rights and the prevention of domestic violence, but that activism led to threats against her life and the lives of her children. In 2012 she sent her kids to the Dominican Republic for (relative) safety while she was on a trip to the U.S., but was unable to return and the family became permanently separated. Malya applied for asylum here, but there was no program that allowed her children to join her. Then, in the fall of 2022, an existing immigration program was expanded to include Haitians, and in mid-March her kids flew into Philadelphia International Airport to join her. An overjoyed Malya was not only reunited with her two sons and daughter, but met her five-year-old granddaughter, Lheina, for the very first time. Since Malya, who works at a food packaging company, had no resources to purchase bedding and other items for the family, we stepped in and set up an Amazon wish list with all the items they needed. There was an outpouring of support from our donors, and the family quickly received the beds, bedding, towels, clothing, phones, shoes and other basic items they needed as they started their new lives here in the U.S.
Three years after launching our Refugee Family and Holocaust Survivor sponsorship programs in the New York area, Family-to-Family has expanded both programs to California. Working with Seniors At Home (part of Jewish Family and Children’s Services) in San Francisco, and Human Rights First in Los Angeles, we’ve begun providing monthly grocery gift cards to impoverished refugees and Holocaust survivors in both cities. We’re in the initial stage of expanding our Sponsor A Family program to L.A. as well.
