Replacing Crisis with Hope

In October 2023, thousands of migrants arrived in our city, many in sandals during winter; children were sleeping in tents on the streets of our neighborhood. Confronted with urgent needs- emergency shelter, food, winter clothing- our community acted. Within 12 weeks of creating a Facebook group to coordinate support, nearly 6,000 community members joined and began a comprehensive web of support which ranged from feeding people in encampments, running a large donation center out of a church, and bringing families off the streets and into homes. Today, our social network includes over 8,500 volunteers and immigrants engaged in ongoing mutual aid. Two of the admin of this group formally launched Hope Has No Borders inspired by the initiatives taken by our community. We built programs that addressed the urgent needs immigrants expressed to us like the need for access to legal work and cultural fluency regarding employment. We saw the willingness of the community to open their homes and created a more strategic & supportive approach through our Host Home Program. To address the critical gap in legal access and affordability (more than 78% of asylum seekers cannot afford legal representation) we built technological and translation support and collaborated with lawyers to learn how to file asylum applications, work permit applications, and court motions. We also created a more equitable way to continue to deliver fast, flexible financial assistance and to prevent homelessness & other urgent crises, reducing harm before it escalates. Our programs continue to adapt to evolving changes in immigration policy, but all are intentionally designed with these values in mind: