Author: Lisa Littlewood
To walk through the doors of the red brick house at 318 Breckenridge Street on Buffalo’s West Side for the first time is to experience a certain level of culture shock. Women and men of varying ethnicities– Burmese, Somali, Burundi, Congolese, Sudanese, Cuban, Ethiopian and Iraqi, to name a few– crowd into the bay window and the former dining room of this once residential house and wait for assistance from one of case workers.
Several women have sleeping babies slung on their backs, others shush children or stand alone and quietly wait their turn. Many are chatting to each other in languages as varied as the people speaking them.
One client needs help reading her mail, another needs to set up a doctor’s appointment, another needs help filling out food stamp paperwork and another needs transport and translation for a morning doctor’s appointment. Sometimes clients need help with green cards, or because their water has been shut off. Sometimes they need suggestions for ESL classes or learning how to register their children for school. Others need jobs and are not sure where or how to begin looking.
By the time I arrive at 9:30 on a Wednesday morning the crowded house was packed. On this particular morning, Anna Ireland, the drop-in center’s ring leader most mornings, had 50 donated bikes to give away (see why). In the midst of it all, the toilet downstairs exploded and demanded fixing and other Jericho Road employees were shuffling around searching for meeting space.
This proved to be an average morning as far as needs go. It gets crazier at times, but Ireland and her team seem to thrive on it. Chaos for a cause is how I jokingly referred to it. Chaos for a very good cause.
There is no neat and orderly way to serve the vast needs of the estimated 25,000 refugees who have been resettled in Buffalo, mostly on the West Side. The needs are many and the cultures varied, but everyone on the Jericho Road Ministry staff seems to have a common goal; to better the lives of those hard pressed, particularly those who had no choice in coming to the United States, but were forced from their homes and countries for awful and horrific reasons.
Jericho Family Ministries is a multi-dimensional organization that began in 2003 as a sister organization to Jericho Road Family Practice; a medical practice providing healthcare to between 20,000-30,000 mostly poverty stricken patients on Buffalo’s West Side, many of whom are refugees. Upon realizing that the needs of his patients far surpassed mere medical, founder Myron Glick set out to create an organization that could meet as many of his clients needs as possible.
Jericho Road found its name in the biblical story of the good samaritan. A story that compels its readers to love your neighbor as yourself, but really challenges its readers to think about who their “neighbor” actually is. Jericho Road employee Alicia Clifton explains that the samaritans and the Jews were two cultures with strong enmity towards each other. When the samaritan goes above and beyond to help the fallen Jewish man (who has been left to die and passed over by several others on the same road), the message is quite simple, love those other than you, of different cultures than you, those you don’t completely understand or relate too. “Other than me, that’s the person I’m supposed to be a neighbor to,” says Clifton.
Today, Jericho Road Ministries, which has grown faster than they could have imagined, and sometimes faster than the needs they can meet, is a multi-faceted organization with over a dozen programs.
Programs fall into three categories (part of their holistic approach): health and family services, adult empowerment and youth and education. Programs include a diabetes center, a family needs pantry, the Pricilla Project (focusing on vulnerable refugee women who are pregnant or mothers), a homebuyers education program, an urban gardening initiative, a financial management program, a reading program, and a tutoring and learning program that attempts to bring refugee students up to speed academically.
The Drop-In Center, which I visited, is one more branch of Jericho’s outreach. The center serves more more than 80 clients each day and is a client-driven program that offers case management for any number of issues including educational, housing, social services, interpretation and health needs.
Despite the dire circumstances that many refugees have fled from there is a pervasive feeling of hope which seems to illuminate the attitudes of many of Jericho’s clients as well as its workers.
Alicia Clifton, the 25-year old Director of Health and Family Services who has been with Jericho since 2007, would agree that while her job can be overwhelming at times, it is also incredibly rewarding because of those she is serving.
“The refugees we serve still have this incredible amount of hope. They’re so motivated and it’s really rewarding because of that. It’s not like the culture of poverty that we often think of. This is situational poverty as opposed to generational poverty. They are a bright spot in the community. They have a vision; someone in their family remembers a better time,” says Clifton.
Jericho Road partnered with HOPE Refugee Services last summer to bring a stronger focus to a unified cause. Anna Ireland, one of HOPE’s founders, is one of the first people to greet clients as they walk in the drop-in center’s door. For this very reason many of the refugees have taken to calling it Anna’s House. Anna and her team of case workers at the center certainly bring an extra measure of hope into their client’s lives, one of the reasons that their client base is growing so quickly.
Ireland, who has worked with refugee populations in Buffalo since 2002, has just as much respect for her clients as they do for her. “Refugees are survivors,” she says. “They want to know am I safe? Are my children safe? We help them take take it a day at a time. Slowly, as they adjust and work through these emotions and the differences to being here, you begin to see a change- not planning a day at a time, but a week at a time, or a year at time.”
For all of these reasons and more the message that has spread through the refugee community is that “You can keep getting help at HOPE.”
Jericho Road’s needs are widespread. They are always looking for volunteers for their many programs; tutors, mentors, case workers, even drivers to help drive clients to doctors appointments that may be outside of the West Side. If you are interested in volunteering you can call David Francis, volunteer coordinator at 716-882-1326 or email him at david.francis144@gmail.com. You can also visit the web site to see a more detailed list of volunteer opportunities.
They are also always looking for donations of clothing, books, household items, personal care items, baby food and formula, baby gear (such as strollers, car seats, cribs, etc.), and furniture. The web site includes a more detailed list of needed items.