About Us
Finding Inspiration in Every Turn
Photo by Tilisa Loboli (Tanzania), a photographer and Teen Response program client. She is in 11th grade at John Marshall High School of Civil & Business Leadership. Her work focuses on portraits of her friends and family members.
Welcome to Cleveland. Welcome Home
This is an exciting time for our organization and our city. After four years when refugee admissions reached record lows, we’re expecting more refugees than ever to be resettled in Cleveland in 2022.
Immigrants have always been the lifeblood of Cleveland, and our latest newcomers are no different. With a little bit of help getting on their feet, our new neighbors can succeed in school, get good-paying jobs, start businesses, and reinvigorate communities. We at Refugee Response are thrilled to welcome our new friends home.
​
In the past few years, Refugee Response has grown exponentially, serving more and more refugees with high-quality services that affect every aspect of their lives. In the coming year, we expect to add even more programs, team members and clients to our family.
But we need your help to make that happen. Please show your support for Cleveland’s refugee newcomers by donating to The Refugee Response. Together, we can give our newest neighbors the welcome they deserve.
Photo by Christian Amuli (Congo), a self-taught portrait and event photographer. He also works as a Swahili translator at a local health clinic for the East African community in Cleveland.
At the end of every year, we ask supporters to donate what they can to our general fund. This push for donations makes up a significant part of our operating budget for the coming year.
For our annual appeal for donations this year, we wanted to highlight the way that refugees see Cleveland. The Refugee Response hosted photography workshops for kids and young adults in our programming this year. The results were stunning, and we wanted to share them with you. We can't think of a better way to highlight how refugees revitalize Cleveland, and the new ideas and viewpoints they bring to our community.
If we have your physical mailing address, you'll soon receive a mailer with three postcards featuring photographs from Refugee Response clients and friends. Christian Amuli, a working portrait photographer, was hired to cover our benefit this year, while Boche Fadoul and Tilisa Loboli are both clients in Refugee Response programs.
Each year we want to give our supporters something memorable that's connected to the work we do at Refugee Response. This year we were inspired by booklets of vintage postcards from the 1970s that Clevelanders could use to give friends and family around the country a glimpse of our home. We want to re-introduce Cleveland from the perspective of refugees who have made a new home here.
Photo by Boche Fadoul (Sudan), a photographer and Teen Response program client. He is currently in 10th grade at John Marshall High School of Civic & Business Leadership. Boche likes to capture the beauty of the constantly changing faces of nature in Cleveland.
Original source material (left) from classic travelers' post card books from the 1960s as well as our 2021 update on the theme (below).
