Thank you all so much for your generous support during our Missoula Gives campaign! We exceeded our funding goal by over $500 and it wouldn’t be possible without all of you and the hard work of our volunteers. Thank you as well to the Missoula Community Foundation for organizing the event to create a day of giving for our community’s wonderful non-profits.
Tonight at 6 p.,m a city-wide “day of giving” through Missoula Gives begins. This year their goal is to raise $300,000 for local non-profit organizations. This astonishing number showcases how incredible and giving the Missoula community is and I am positive it will be reached! Soft Landing Missoula is excited to be a part of this for the second year in a row and I mainly mention this to once again voice my extreme gratitude for this little city we call home.
I got to see this same compassion, openness, and support for two incredible events that happened over the last week: The opening dinner for SALAM’s Celebrate Islam week for which refugee and immigrant women and men cooked up a HUGE and delicious feast, and the play (through a UM GLI group) “When one Becomes Many” that was written and performed by Congolese refugee families. Hundreds, and I mean HUNDREDS, of people showed up for both of these events, where much, if not all, of the proceeds went directly to the families that participated. I was in awe of the talent and effort that went into both of these events, and once again in awe of you, Missoula. I keep saying “Missoula” but I would also like to recognize those I saw from around the state at these events and the donations that continue to come in from the Bitterroot, Flathead, Bozeman, Great Falls, Billings and other spots in Montana! Thank you so much for continuing to welcome our new neighbors with huge smiles, open arms, and even at times, your pocket books!
We very much appreciate your donations through Missoula Gives, but I want to also highlight three other ways you can help as we gear up for a very busy summer:
1) Donate swimsuits! A wonderful and hardworking volunteer has successfully gotten a grant to work with the YMCA to offer free swim lessons to refugee families. We are now trying to make sure everyone gets a nice new (or like new) swim suit. We will be accepting all sizes of new suits at our office, as well as gift cards for Walmart, Target, and Bob Wards so the families can pick out their own suits. Stop by and visit or email info@softlandingmissoula.org for other arrangements.
2) and 3) Please check out our Volunteer page. We have agreed to manage all new home set-ups for incoming families (and yes! they are still coming!) and help take the bulk of this work off the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) plate. We are also sponsoring a booth at the Missoula Farmers’ Market for our families to sell yummy homemade treats and need a ton of help with all aspects of this! Check out the Volunteer page for more details or email volunteer@softlandingmissoula.org.
That is all for now my lovely community of Missoula and Montana 😉 Enjoy the sun today!
In love and gratitude,
Mary
Soft Landing Missoula is participating in Missoula Gives, which kicks off today, May 4, at 6 p.m. and runs through tomorrow, May 5, at 6 p.m. It’s easy to participate! Visit our Missoula Gives page to donate or visit one of the Donor Lounges happening around town (drop in, socialize, donate!). Donor Lounges can also accept cash and check donations. Donate now!
We are so excited to be a small part of this amazing project that is giving some of Missoula’s new refugee families the chance to tell their own stories from behind the cameras! Please consider contributing to this Kick Starter Campaign to help them get this project off the ground and equip the filmmakers with appropriate equipment. Donations accepted through Thursday, May 25! Get more info and donate.
Have you ever been too nervous to engage in conversation with neighbors, friends, and family around refugees or other potentially divisive topics? Or maybe you have no trouble diving in, but you find it rarely goes well? Do you want to learn more about ways that we can use dialogue to create a welcoming community for all? Then join Soft Landing Missoula as we explore “Dialogue Across the Divide” and gain new skills to more comfortably exist in this challenging space. Learn more and sign up.
“As politics were getting so heavy last fall, I was feeling depressed for the first time ever in my life. I was telling my physical therapist, ‘Boy, I’m going to start seeing a counselor to try and find a way to deal with this depression.’ I’ve never felt so bad before and there’s all this news that’s so negative. She said, ‘Have you ever thought about calling Soft Landing and maybe seeing if you might find some work with the refugees?’ Read more.
Last month, Kristin read an article in the Montana Kaimin called “In Search of Home: Refugees Struggle for a Place in Missoula.” The article describes the struggles of refugees getting to America and how they adjust to life once they arrive. A quote from Joel Kambale, a man from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, inspired Kristin to write the poem below. The quote was, “Where we are working, we are being asked many questions: ‘How did you get here?’ ‘Who brought you here?’ Such questions are not good,” Kambale said. Kristin felt deeply troubled by those questions and put her emotions into the words below.
The Husband Speaks From His Heart
Words pierce the air, so off hand,
where do you come from and why are you here?
the questioning people demand.
Who is your family and where do they live?
Invasive, intrusive, interrogative.
So much concern for what we are made of
have we tested your DNA?
It seems not enough to have skills and show up
The prodders still push in, that’s their way.
What does it matter to folks all around
to be poking for info, to dash with their tongues?
It’s so plenty hard for good work to be found,
to be dependable, honest and climb up the rungs.
I know where I come from, the stories were told
over and over by relatives young and old.
Yet I feel not better than those just come here.
It’s my desire to welcome all folks, I am clear.
Kristin McNamara Freeman
April 2017
Read the first post about Kristin.
Photos and Interview by Elliott Natz
Soft Landing Missoula is participating in Missoula Gives, which kicks off today, May 4, at 6 p.m. and runs through tomorrow, May 5, at 6 p.m. (though you can donate any time).
It’s easy to participate! Visit our Missoula Gives page to donate or visit one of the Donor Lounges happening around town (drop in, socialize, donate!). Donor Lounges can also accept cash and check donations.
Organizations can also win prizes based on certain types of donations (see the list).
Formerly Give Local Missoula, Missoula Gives is a powerful and growing 24-hour, online and in-person giving event organized by the Missoula Community Foundation (MissoulaCF) to grow philanthropy in the Missoula area by connecting donors to the nonprofits that make our town so special.
Soft Landing Missoula would like to ask all its supporters to help us continue our programs. With summer just around the corner we are working on many wonderful projects. One of our main objectives is to make transportation accessible to all our new families. We are working to help families obtain their drivers licenses, bikes, locks, and lessons to learn to navigate our wonderful city, and much more!
Thank you! We are so grateful for all of your support and for making our community a safe place for all!
As politics were getting so heavy last fall, I was feeling depressed for the first time ever in my life. I was telling my physical therapist, “Boy, I’m going to start seeing a counselor to try and find a way to deal with this depression.” I’ve never felt so bad before and there’s all this news that’s so negative.
She said, “Have you ever thought about calling Soft Landing and maybe seeing if you might find some work with the refugees?”
And I went home, I filled out the application, at her encouragement. And I went and volunteered to be at tutor. ‘Cause I was depressed. The decision we came to was if I could put my energy into doing things that were good, that I could change my trajectory of feeling depressed into one of feeling joy and happiness. So instead of being sad, I got to be happy.
Read the second post about Kristin.
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Kristin Freeman is a tutor at Soft Landing Missoula. She spends her other hours tending to her garden, helping raise two grand-kids, knitting and crocheting, and writing.
Photo and interview by Elliott Natz
We are so excited to be a small part of this AMAZING project that is giving some of Missoula’s new refugee families the chance to tell their own stories from behind the cameras!
According to the project page, “The New Neighbors Project explores the relationship between new refugee arrivals and long-time Montanans through a tapestry of self-directed first person stories…Follow refugees as they venture into dramatic western terrains (both physical and social) and glimpse the spirit of our changing state.”
Please consider contributing to this Kick Starter Campaign to help them get this project off the ground and equip the filmmakers with appropriate equipment. Donations accepted through Thursday, May 25!
Grant: We get to run our own program, we write our own curriculum…I think I’m a better English teacher now than when I started. It’s just fun.
With English classes we get a constant influx of people, we usually get the newest people, so it changes a lot. A lot of times they are very nervous when they show up and I think it’s fun because it’s not a very intensive classroom environment so it’s fun to see people open up and feel comfortable. You become aware that they are just people so you talk to them like you would other people, as long as you have the language skills to do so. You quickly forget about refugee status or anything like that and just talk about who’s good at English, who is not so much, who talks in class, who has cute kids. Stuff like that, same kind of stuff you’d talk about with coworkers.
Hayley: Teaching. It’s reaffirmed that there are kinds of universal communication that works with everybody. Like smiling and laughing and being kind of goofy when teaching class. I first tried that out in China with little kids and it turns out it works just as well in Montana with people from the Congo, or Eritrea or Iraq or Syria. There is a kind of basis of human communication that pretty much works wherever you are. It’s definitely helped me develop that skill-set; to feel like no matter where I am, or no matter how much language I share in common with someone, I can communicate with them.
Photos and interview by Elliott Natz
Grant: I never really thought about (joining Soft Landing) too much. When I learned about that we were getting refugees and that I could do something it was kind of a no brainer. It seems obvious to me that you should help refugees, they seem like the kind of people who need help. It seems like a tough situation to be in and if there is something you can do, you should do it.
Hayley: (I wanted to help because) watching the news and seeing the human suffering that’s going on in various places in the world because of war or famine or oppression, and realizing that if I was born in a different place or time that could be me. And I have the ability to try and reach out and help, and with that ability comes a little bit of an obligation to do what you can, where you can.
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Grant Parker is an Education Masters student at UM and Hayley Wright is an RN at St. Patrick Hospital in Missoula. Both are IRC Mentors and English Language Learner teachers at Soft Landing Missoula.
Interview and photo by Elliott Natz
