Lori Stoll spends every day working out of her car. As the director of the Columbia nonprofit City of Refuge, Stoll is always driving across town, doing a variety of tasks to help recent refugees. From ferrying people to doctor’s appointments to talking someone through a job application, Stoll has learned to do it all.
“I go to refugees’ homes and find out things that they need and help with everything it takes to get used to a new culture,” Stoll said. “Every day is different, according to their needs. I’ll walk them through what they need to do. It’s kind of like being a mom to those 50-100 different families.”
Stoll began working with refugees as a college student, tutoring Vietnamese children fleeing war in their country. She said the experience opened her eyes to their struggles and inspired her to dedicate her life to helping refugees like them achieve a better life. When African refugees began arriving in Columbia around 10 years ago, she knew something needed to be done.
“When I met the Burmese the need was pretty overwhelming. There was only one caseworker here in Columbia at the immigration office and they had a different philosophy,” Stoll said. “They were just trained to get them as independent as possible in as short amount of time as possible, but what I was seeing was a lot of trauma and a lot of cultural adjustment that took more time. I wanted to be available so that they could heal.”
Senad Music, a former refugee from Bosnia, said culture shock is one of the most pressing challenges refugees face. As the office manager for the Refugee and Immigration Services of the Catholic Charities of Central and Northern Missouri, located at 201 W. Broadway, Music has had to walk refugees through tasks that to many seem second-nature, such as how to close and lock a door. This ‘fish-out-of-water’ struggle many refugees face makes it difficult for Music to help them with more complicated matters, like filling out job applications and tax forms.
“Our main thing is to make refugees in the first 30 to 90 days self-sufficient. That means get job, get driver’s license, things like that,” Senad said. “It’s very hard. There is many people who come here and are uneducated. They cannot read or write even in their own language, so it is very hard.”
Music said the Refugee and Immigration Services office aims to ease refugees’ transition to the United States by paying for their housing, buying furniture and household supplies and purchasing food. The office does all this on a one-time lump sum of $925 per refugee, an amount that Music said is not even enough to start with. He knows first hand the financial difficulties refugees face as newcomers. After being held for three years as a de-facto prisoner in a refugee camp in Serbia, Music was able to come to America by way of the Red Cross. When he arrived in Columbia, however, his problems were far from fixed.
“I wish nobody will go through [what I went through]. I came here and was the first Bosnia refugee in Columbia, so nobody spoke my language. Only language I can understand it is Russian,” Music said. “I had to work two jobs to bring over my wife, my mother, my brother; now I have lots of relatives here. But when I came in 1996 it was nightmare. I work for hours cleaning offices and it was very hard.”
Given that many current refugees are in a similar situation, one of City of Refuge’s goals is to help with the strain of multiple jobs and money troubles by providing transportation and education services. Senior Faramola Shonekan, a volunteer with City of Refuge, was recently tasked with driving a Jordanian woman to the eye doctor, and has previously tutored children at the homes of refugee families.  For Shonekan, the experience opened her eyes to the continued difficulties refugees face in Columbia.
“The refugees are operating under a need mentality, so anything they need that I can give them is worth so much to them,” Shonekan said. “For example, when I was able to get that lady an eye doctor appointment, she was just so grateful.”
Shonekan strongly believes in City of Refuge’s message and purpose, even selecting the organization as her charity of choice when she was nominated for homecoming queen in September.
“I’ve been volunteering since the school year started,” Shonekan said. “My favorite part about volunteering is learning about [refugees’] culture and everything they have gone through. It enlightens me and exposes me to our society and it makes me more grateful for what I have here.”
According to the City of Refuge website, people can help support the organization through donations and–more unexpectedly–dentistry services, which many refugees need desperately. In Music’s opinion, however, one of the most important ways Columbia residents can help refugees is by educating themselves on refugee issues.
“One thing that I’d like to see is community doing more education on refugees,” Music said. “So they understand that they’re not here to take nobody[‘s] job, to take nobody[‘s] house, to take nobody[‘s] family. They are here just to save themselves.”