For many of the newly resettled refugees in Minnesota, this will be their first experience of a bitter cold winter. As you can imagine, winter can be shocking for new arrivals, especially if they don’t have the right gear to stay warm.

Many times, mothers and fathers are limited in the time they can spend there or the type of support they can receive at IIM because they need to be taking care of their children. When we gathered volunteers to help individuals with their citizenship applications, we wanted to make sure that those parents could give their full attention to the process

The International Institute of Minnesota (IIM) is an incredible resource for permanent residences in Minnesota, seeking to become U.S. citizens. These are individuals and families who love this country, and want to contribute to the communities they live in as citizens. But the process can be confusing. So IIM offers free appointments for people to receive guidance and support through all the complicated steps.

When we sat down to chat with the Refugee Coalition of East Africa (RefCEA) one of the things they brought up time and time again was being able to hold trainings at their house.