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Thanksgiving dinner helps lead to refugee mentorship program

By Harry Funk staff Writer hfunk@thealmanac.Net 4 min read
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Two days before Thanksgiving two years ago, Sloane Davidson received a telephone call and a request.

“We have a family for you and want to know if you want to invite them to Thanksgiving dinner.”

Harry Funk / The Almanac

Harry Funk / The Almanac

Sloane Davidson speaks at Mt. Lebanon Public Library about Hello Neighbor.

Davidson had signed up with a service organization to invite a family of refugees to a meal, she told her audience during a recent program at Mt. Lebanon Public Library. And a couple and their three children who fled from Syria were interested in participating.

With the blessing of the hosts of her own family’s Thanksgiving dinner, Davidson made the necessary arrangements.

“And so this family did, sight unseen, knock on our door and come join us for Thanksgiving dinner,” the mother of two said.

The occasion helped lead to her founding Hello Neighbor, a Pittsburgh-based mentorship program supporting recently resettled refugees and their families, in January 2017.

“We didn’t have a lot that we could say, but I realize that sharing a meal, that breaking of bread, has this very powerful effect where you don’t have to necessarily share a language to share an experience,” she said about the dinner.

“As they were leaving and we were saying goodbye, I said, ‘So, what are you doing next weekend?’ And thus began this really authentic, beautiful friendship with this family, where they came over to our house for dinner. They had us to their house for a Syrian supper. They came to my son’s first birthday party and my holiday party, where they saw a Christmas tree for the first time.”

Davidson, who was working on her master’s degree in public and international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh, wrote about the relationship they established and published it on the writers’ website Medium.

“Wouldn’t you know, it just picked up like wildfire. Thousands of people saw it and shared it,” she recalled. “And hundreds of people said, ‘How can I do what you have done?'”

The response similarly was overwhelming with the launch of Hello Neighbor.

“When I opened the mentor applications, would you believe we got three times the amount that we thought we had spots for,” Davidson said.

The program matches volunteers with families who have been in the United States from six months to five years. A main focus is to help relieve them of the isolation they often experience.

“For a lot of refugee families, they go to work. They go to school, and they come home. And that’s it,” Davidson explained. “Maybe on Saturday, they go to the grocery store and do their big shop. But if a dad is the breadwinner and he goes out, the mom can stay home all day with the kids and not even leave.”

The first cohort of matching mentors with refugees – Hello Neighbor’s third is coming soon – involved 72 families from Afghanistan, Bhutan, Congo, Iraq, Ivory Coast, Myanmar, Nigeria, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan and Syria.

“They do a mix of life skills, cultural experiences and then also exploring Pittsburgh. And that was really important to me. I felt like there were a lot of volunteer programs where people go into the home, but I really wanted something that was focused on breaking social isolation and getting those families out,” Davidson said.

Members of those families have told her what Hello Neighbor has meant to them:

“We felt alone before your program, and now we feel like we have family here in Pittsburgh.”

For more information, visit www.helloneighbor.io.

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