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Charitable organizations of the Catholic Church
Ilhan Omar was born in Mogadishu in 1982 as the youngest of seven children; her mother died when Omar was about two and she was raised by her father and grandfather before the family fled the outbreak...
Ilhan Omar’s family fled Mogadishu because of the collapse of order and rising violence in Somalia’s civil war after President Siad Barre’s government fell in 1991; Omar has said the war “started when...
Community and faith organizations — refugee resettlement agencies (like Lutheran Social Services, Catholic Charities, International Institute of Minnesota), Somali-led nonprofits (Confederation of Som...
Minnesota hosts the largest Somali community in the United States, concentrated in the Twin Cities, but estimates of its size vary widely across sources — from roughly 43,000 Somalia-born residents to...
Federal refugee resettlement in the 1990s–2000s was run by a mix of U.S. government programs and private “VOLAG” sponsors: the federal government processed admissions and funded initial assistance whi...
U.S. refugee resettlement programs opened large-scale, organized pathways for Somalis beginning around 1990–1993, producing tens of thousands of arrivals over the 1990s and 2000s and concentrating pop...
Minnesota’s Somali residents are served by a mix of long-established Somali-led nonprofits (Confederation of Somali Community in Minnesota/CSCM, Somali Community Resettlement Services, Somali Multi Se...
Minnesota’s Somali community arrived mostly as refugees in the 1990s with high poverty, limited credential transferability, and concentrated low-wage employment; over three decades those indicators ha...
Several state agencies and programs connect Somali families in Minnesota to housing, food and health services — notably the Minnesota Department of Human Services’ Refugee Programs and its Refugee and...
Somali refugee arrivals to the United States began in earnest around 1990 , and placement of refugees inside the U.S. is administratively handled by national resettlement agencies and their local affi...
Lutheran and Catholic churches in Minnesota acted as principal voluntary agencies (VOLAGs) that resettled Somali refugees beginning in the early 1990s and provided direct housing placement, case manag...
Start locally and use national directories: the Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) publishes a quarterly List of Pro Bono Legal Service Providers you can search by immigration court locati...
’s resettlement agencies, backed by a state Resettlement Programs Office, have been pivotal in channeling refugees into particular counties and cities by providing services, managing federal funds and...
Somali refugee resettlement to Minnesota began in earnest in the early 1990s after Somalia’s civil war, grew rapidly through the 1990s and 2000s into the largest concentration of Somalis outside Afric...
Somali-led organizations act as hubs that deliver culturally and linguistically specific health and social services to refugees and immigrants, working alongside faith-based resettlement agencies such...
Since 2015 Minnesota faith groups — both Muslim and non-Muslim — have reshaped worship, social services and neighborhood outreach to meet the needs of a growing Somali population by partnering with re...
Faith-based resettlement organizations in Minnesota — including Catholic Charities, Lutheran Social Service, Arrive Ministries and other Volags — have worked alongside federal and state agencies, loca...
Somali-led community organizations in Minnesota have long partnered with faith institutions and faith-based resettlement agencies to deliver culturally specific services ranging from refugee reception...
Minnesota faith groups encountered logistical, cultural and political obstacles while serving Somali newcomers: language and faith-practice barriers, trauma and climate adaptation needs, shrinking res...
U.S. refugee resettlement programs were a central institutional mechanism that enabled large numbers of Somalis to relocate to Minnesota: federal refugee visas and local resettlement agencies provided...