Advocating for Refugees in our Community: Civic Allyship Workshop featuring IRIS

Dwight Hall Civic Allyship workshop featuring IRIS: Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services. This workshop will feature an overview of IRIS’s programs and discuss the experience of refugee families resettling in the United States. Attendees will also hear about upcoming advocacy opportunities including a virtual border crossing.

This hybrid event is open to the public. Visitors to campus must comply with Yale COVID-19 Visitor Policy as described at: https://covid19.yale.edu/visitors-policy. The zoom event is part of the Journeys Toward Justice series, a multi-college collaboration spotlighting changemakers across the country who are driving justice and equity forward. Please register here to attend virtually.

About IRIS:

Refugee families who arrive from overseas come to the U.S. with virtually no material possessions. They have lost homes, friends, family, country, culture, and jobs. Most do not speak any English. They have no income, and many are victims of trauma, with physical or mental health needs. As great as their initial needs are, their potential to enrich our community is even greater.

Asylum seekers, asylees, and other immigrant families who seek assistance stabilizing their family situation often have many of the same needs as refugees coming from overseas. However, since they are already in the U.S., it is often the case that they have some limited resources or extended support network that can be built upon with the help of IRIS.

IRIS provides targeted wrap-around services for all clients, using a strength-based assessment model, that offers long-term support for successful integration.

Debra Riding brings over 3 decades of experience in New Haven’s public, charter, and independent schools to her role as Director of Education at IRIS.  As an educator, she prioritizes cross-cultural understanding, experiential learning, student empowerment, and social justice.  Debra has degrees from Yale and Quinnipiac.

Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and resettled in New Haven in 2016, Hossna Samadi has passionately devoted the past five years to advocating for and serving refugees and immigrants in New Haven in many different capacities. Having experienced the challenges of being a refugee firsthand, she is passionate about supporting, assisting and amplifying their voices, particularly Afghan women. In her volunteer work with Integrated Refugee & Immigrant Services (IRIS), she serves as a member of the Cultural Companion Ally Team and as an Ambassador, speaking to a wide range of audiences. Samadi is the co-founder of the Collective for Refugee and Immigrant Women’s Wellbeing, whose grant-sponsored pilot project partners with Yale University’s Program on Recovery and Health in the Community. She is a Program Associate at Sanctuary Kitchen by CitySeed.

About the Dwight Hall Civic Allyship Initiative:

Dwight Hall’s Civic Allyship Initiative is elevating the existing work of community organizers in New Haven and beyond. The program confronts complex social challenges, convening criminal justice advocates, grassroots activists, currently and formerly incarcerated people, students, and professors in equitable relationships through workshops, trainings, and research. Together, these allies are utilizing new grassroots organizing strategies, developing opportunities for underrepresented populations in civic leadership, and laying the groundwork for substantive policy reforms.