How to Serve Refugees through Catholic Community Services

Looking for CCS Refugee Resettlement volunteer forms? Here you go. (16 April 2016)

Refugee Resettlement Orientation

So I attended a Refugee Resettlement Orientation in Salt Lake City, hosted by Catholic Community Services (CCS). Thanks to lovely 5 PM traffic, by the time I arrived in the modest-sized basement room there was not even standing room.

I hung out in the hallway and listened. The lecture itself was two hours long and focused primarily on informing individuals on the current plight of refugees, as well as the challenges faced by local volunteers in Utah. I only could hear a fraction of it from the hallway, but it was geared towards persuading people to help refugees. The lecture didn't provide much to those who had already made the decision to help.

The treasure from the orientation was the pink folder I received. It contained application forms, volunteer checklists, refugee integration outlines, and a detailed manual.

Everything You Need

I've digitized those documents so that they are publicly available here. I'll review them in the subsections below.

There are currently three ways to serve refugees through Catholic Community Services here in Utah:

• Family Mentoring - Salt Lake County
• Teaching English - Salt Lake County
• Foster Child Mentoring - Utah County (You are not the foster family, you just visit to mentor) 

(Technically, there is a fourth option to become foster parents to Unaccompanied Refugee Minors, or URMs, but there are some extra requirements and caveats for that one, so I'm not including it.)

CCS asks for a certain level of time commitment for each kind of service, the lowest commitment being two hours per week over several months. You should check if you can fulfill the time requirements for a specific service before moving forward. In fact, you should contact CCS directly before moving forward. My post is just to give you a three second lead.

Applying to Volunteer

The "Application" folder in the public share I linked earlier contains all forms necessary for application. I've prefixed a number to each PDF name. That's the order which you should look at them. The first is a checklist. To apply to serve refugees through CCS, you will need to:

• Fill out the application form
• Agree to a Code of Conduct
• Agree to a Non-Disclosure Agreement
• Fill out a background check application
• Complete the Diocesan Safe Environment training

The checklist itself states that you need to also provide:

• A copy of your social security card
• A copy of your driver's license, Utah ID or valid passport
• Two completed and properly rolled fingerprint cards.

If you're averse to disclosing your social security number, a friend told me that in the case of background checks it is only provided for convenience. You may be able to fight back and have the Utah Department of Human Services Office pull it up themselves. One less set of hands to misplace it, right?

Providing a driver's license is better than providing a passport, because for some reason it costs CCS more to process applications that provide passports than ones that provide driver's licenses.

You can get your fingerprints at any police station. I'm told that you're better off with electronic scanners than rolling them with ink; if the ink-roll isn't good, you have to do it again and resubmit the application.

Information about the Program

The "Information" folder contains manuals, checklists, and infographics that I deemed valuable. If a packet I received was for persuading and not informing, I did not upload it. I've also prefixed a number to the name of each of these PDFs, but it's just my personal judgment of how valuable they are.

I particularly liked the "Volunteer Mentors Checklist." It itemizes every item that a mentor is to teach a refugee who has recently arrived in Utah. It's a fun read. One of my favorites: "Explain that when you shop you should not eat food from grocery stores or put merchandise in your pockets or purse." Maybe my kids should go through this program.... 

The categories that a mentor covers include:

• Communication
• Transportation
• Community
• Finance
• Home Life
• Hygiene
• Safety

Anyway. I'll try to expand this as I get more time. For now, have fun digging through the docs.