Hope and Help Together motivated by greater sense of urgency to support immigrants

• The Fox Valley Newcomer Project, created by the organization Hope and Help Together, is a community collaboration aimed at helping new immigrants navigate complex challenges.
• The project addresses a wide range of needs for newcomers, from education, housing, and employment to legal assistance and cultural acclimation, highlighting how these areas are all interconnected.
• The organization's work is crucial given the difficulties immigrants face, and it relies on community partnerships, dedicated volunteers, and an understanding of the trauma and resilience of those seeking a new life.

If you scroll down the page of the Fox Valley Newcomer Project – a resource-rich, community collaboration established to help recent immigrants who have settled in the area – you’ll find 11 categories of need, everything from education to employment to housing to finance to language and beyond.

But you could probably narrow that 11 down to just a few because virtually every category overlaps with every other. 

Housing, for instance, is dependent on finance; while education and employment are contingent on language; and housing and healthcare on transportation. Until one need is met, in other words, others can't be.

To consider that, is to begin to understand the overwhelming array of complexities awaiting any newcomer to the United States. Maybe even to admire the fortitude required to face them and try to make a whole new life in a whole new land. To consider it is also to begin to appreciate the level of trauma and hardship that would drive someone to uproot themselves and their families for so much uncertainty, so much potential new trauma.

Five years ago, Trinity Lutheran Church in Appleton began the project that would eventually become Hope and Help Together, the organization that began the Fox Valley Newcomer Project (FVNP), which HHT identifies as the more visionary, long-range track of their work. HHT also addresses the much more immediate day-to-day needs of newcomer families to the Fox Valley. Different tracks but running in the same direction – toward the identification of the greatest needs of newcomers as well as the resources available to meet them.

It is important, also, to keep in mind that the acculturation curve for immigrants is a long and tenuous one, even before you begin to factor in the greater vulnerability they face under the Trump administration’s mass deportation mindset. According to the HHT website, the path to acculturation – to a newcomer feeling they have fully settled into their new life – is a rollercoaster of emotion, from the euphoria of escaping their past trauma when they first arrive to the realization of their new strange and frightening circumstances (the culture shock stage) to the beginning of the acculturation process, which can take anywhere from two to 10 years. 

“I would say it helps to have resources and get to know where those resources are,” says Phenah Kisembo, the director of the Fox Valley Newcomer Project, who herself came to the United States from Uganda. “But I normally say it also helps to have the good neighbors who would plug you into those resources. At the same time I say, who has been your contact to come into the area. If it was World Relief, then you'll be plugged into the right places. If you’re coming on your own and you don’t have an idea of what those resources are, you would still be in the struggling phase.”

Hilary Haskell, Executive Director of Hope and Help Together and a former English learner teacher, says making connections and building relationships outside the home is essential for newcomers, especially for younger people. 

“If they’re not, they can really get stuck as far as mental health,” she says. “The relationships are what help people with their mental health journey, especially during that culture shock part, and being able to name and identify the things that they're grieving is a part of that process.”

The genesis for Hope and Help Together

Trinity Lutheran volunteers recognized that, as great as the work World Relief Fox Valley was doing in settling newcomers, WRFV lacked the resources to help those folks get established in their new lives.

Things have since gotten more dire for World Relief after it lost so much of its grant money following President Trump’s executive order cutting the US Agency for International Development (USAID). That has resulted in not only a loss of critical funding for newcomers’ essential living expenses but in staff cuts at World Relief. It all underscores the greater urgency placed on organizations like HHT and the Fox Valley Newcomer Project.

“The amount of time that (World Relief) was given to support a family was short and inadequate, and there was a pretty big gap between the kinds of support that these families need to thrive in the Valley and what was available,” says Haskell. “That group of (Trinity Lutheran) volunteers and Pastor Brian Bankert connected with leaders across all sectors – and specifically newcomer leaders – people who have lived experience and professional expertise in supporting this population.”

Trinity Lutheran brought together educators, healthcare providers, employers and faith community leaders and thus began the first listening sessions. Over 500 people showed up.

“They were asking, ‘what do all these people see as opportunities and gaps in the services and supports that exist, and what might we be able to do about it?’” Haskell says. “And so it was out of those listening sessions our group Hope and Help Together really came to be, and that initial strategy of bringing together all of the people who have diverse kinds of experiences through the common goal of increasing the support and services for newcomers. 

“What can we do when we combine our resources?” 

An ambitious undertaking

The needs are many and the undertaking broad and complicated. There are so many moving parts, from determining needs to pinpointing what organizations in the area can best serve them to onboarding those organizations to finding volunteers with special skills and knowledge to fill very specific roles. HHT, for instance, has or is seeking volunteers who can speak Spanish, Arabic, Dari, Farsi, French, Swahili, Kinywarwanda, Haitian and/or Creole.

There are, additionally, needs for legal aids, driving instructors, tutors, folks who can help newcomers navigate the health care system and Medicaid, finances, education, employment, housing and transportation.

It is, in other words, an ambitious project requiring great organizational acumen, vision and patience – not to mention perserverance – all in the face of ever-growing urgency with Trump’s aggressive, even extralegal, efforts to deport people. It requires networking and connections that lead to more connections.

“The work happens because the community is involved,” Haskell explains. “And so for it to continue, we need the community to stay involved and to keep renewing their involvement. And that means if one person said that they wanted to do something, we need them to show up so that we can learn from them. And then to look at the people who they're connected with and to say, hey, this other resource could also be an asset.”

Among the many partners involved in the project are World Relief Fox Valley; the Appleton Area, Green Bay, New London and Menasha School Districts; Amcor Global Packaging and Express Employment Professionals for employment; the Fox Valley Islamic Society; Trinity Lutheran; First English Lutheran; First United Methodist; Unitarian Universalists; Esther; Kids Forward; Fox Valley Tech; the City of Appleton; and multicultural coalition, inc.

The Fox Valley Newcomer Project

In late August, FVNP held its third summit, where Kisembo, the director of the project, talked about how much had been learned since the first summit two years earlier. More than 120 people attended.

“We noticed that in order for us to be able to function well, we had to get out to the community and provide cultural competence training for the individuals that are going to be working with the newcomers,” said Kisembo. “At the same time, we had to train the newcomers with English language for them to cope and navigate the work environment. We also agreed that for us to understand the gaps in the community, we had to bring up our data, and in order for us to have data, we had to have a community map.”

That community map is derived from a survey of newcomers as well as various service organizations in the area and it is essential in determining gaps in services as well as gaps in newcomers’ understanding of how to access them. From Summit 2.0, the group learned that the three top issues facing newcomers are around understanding immigration – including the implications of all the different VISA statuses – housing for people who arrive here with no credit history; and transportation, without which so little else is possible and that includes, in many cases, employment. 

“Newcomers come with hope,” Kisembo says. “They come with all the energy to ensure that they thrive in this particular environment, and it is up to us to make sure that we provide the environment for the newcomers to thrive. It's not just numbers that we're looking at, it's families that are depending on us here to support them to thrive in this particular environment.”

From the community mapping, which is admittedly incomplete given that it includes only 116 newcomer respondents, FVNP has gleaned critical information about pressing needs. They range from a shortage of English classes and interpreters to how to apply for a job to understanding how to apply for loans to finding housing and healthcare

Understanding complicated immigration laws is identified at the HHT website as the most important issue facing immigrants. Everything is impacted by a newcomers’ status from employment opportunities to deportation risk. 

Preparing for a new administration

When the Trump administration came back into power last November, Hope and Help Together began to prepare for what they knew was coming. It was then that they put together the Know Your Rights seminars as well as advocacy training for community members to learn how they could support immigrants who would soon be vulnerable to the administration’s aggressive deportation policies. That training involves education about immigration laws, how to talk to others about newcomers and how to advocate for them. 

“We suddenly did see an uptick in people who were asking for support to connect with legal assistance,” Haskell says. “So as far as the needs of newcomers in our organization, the focus has been, ‘I need a lawyer. Who can I work with?’

“And so we did have an immigration navigator for a while, and he was very helpful in helping people understand where they were in their immigration process and what they might need to do.”

The Know Your Rights training provides essential information and guidance for newcomers in their interactions with immigration officials. It offers suggestions for family preparedness in the case of an ICE raid and guides for accessing resources.

Molly Smiltneek, an immigration rights lawyer and advocate in Northeast Wisconsin, does issue a caveat when it comes to understanding immigrant rights in the current environment.

“I can tell you that, as an immigration lawyer, my world is turned upside down right now because of all the laws and rules that I know are not being followed,” she says. “I can't even give Know Your Rights presentations in good conscience right now, because I know that I'm gonna say, you don't have to open your door. But now they might knock down the door. That is not something that is what's supposed to be happening in our world.”

Along the same lines, HHT also provides six-session driving seminars designed to better acquaint newcomers with Wisconsin driving laws and in how to interact with law enforcement. And there is also a financial education seminar.

“For the driving laws seminar, we start from, what is the role of police?” Haskell says. “What is your experience with the role of police where you come from and what’s your understanding of it here? And then we learn here from an actual police officer what their conception of their role is so we partner with the Appleton police department to teach the classes for the driving laws seminar. 

“We also partner with bankers to teach the financial education seminar, so that we're also building those relationships and that trust with the participants.”

A partner in the Appleton Police Department

Kisembo and Haskell say HHT and the Fox Valley Newcomer Project have a good working relationship with the Appleton Police Department, noting they get newcomer referrals from APD.

“They have a refugee liaison on staff who does internal training with their police officers and we work with her, as well as others," Haskell says. "They have some mental health behavior officers who have been really supportive and knowledgeable and happy to connect with our network members.”

On the other hand, HHT and FVNP have little relationship with the county sheriffs, especially now that most sheriff departments around the state have signed on to the 270(g) agreements that in varying degrees oblige them to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents actively rounding up immigrants in their area.

Two issues HHT and FVNP will probably always battle is volunteer retention and successful outreach to newcomers. Kisembo says volunteer recruitment happens at tabling events and through word of mouth. It doesn’t hurt that so many people are feeling helpless and, thus, moved to action in the face of Trump administration policies that to them seem cruel and unnecessary. As far as newcomer outreach, Kisembo estimates that their organization has probably connected with only 30 percent of the settled immigrant population in the Fox Valley.

“And really, the reasons are diverse, because we want people to come and be part of our network,” she says. “However, you'll find that most of the newcomers that we want to be part of our network are in survival jobs. And having said that, they're doing either two jobs or three jobs, and therefore the time to spare to come and interact with us is not available. And I speak that from experience, because I've done that, and that's where I was stuck at?”

An antidote to despair

Both Kisembo and Haskell say the work they do in some ways allows them to overcome any sense of despair that might settle on them after another day of hard news, after learning about the latest raid or another family broken apart, after another ruling from the courts that seems to sanction policy that was unthinkable just a decade earlier.

“I look at the support we are providing to individuals, and that really keeps me going,” Kisembo says. “Yeah, but also what keeps me going is to go into spaces where I find individuals with the same mindset, with the same work. That’s mainly at conferences or summits. They really invigorate me knowing that there are so many people out there still supporting newcomers. And then the newcomer summits are kind of like adrenaline being injected into you, knowing that, yes, out there, people are still committed to the work. And yes, your work is still important.”

Haskell points to a recent success story as her armor against the weight of the work she and her fellow advocates have taken on. A newcomer one recent winter was referred to their group through the Appleton Police Department. They required housing, employment and legal support and HHT activated a “journey team,” a group of individuals across various areas of expertise to get involved.

“And this journey team was able to connect with a pro bono attorney and find temporary and short-term housing solutions,” Haskell says. “And that individual ended up being granted their asylum and has a work permit and that is one of the individuals who always comes back and is extremely gracious and enthusiastic and very determined. 

“Their English has grown an extensive amount because they made sure that they were taking advantage of all of the English class opportunities. They were at Fox Valley Tech. They were also at Fox Valley Literacy. They also sought out their own tutoring. That kind of personal commitment of that person is what activated that team of people to make all of that happen.”

To get to that result requires so much effort as those 11 sectors of need attest. Hope and Help Together, along with the Fox Valley Newcomer Project, is not where it yet wants or needs to be. There are never enough people, especially those people with the niche skills that are so essential. Yet the work goes on.

“We are a small team that does mighty work,” Kisembo says.