Did you know that supporting a nonprofit can be as easy as eating at a restaurant? 

It’s true! Last November during #GivingTuesdayCLT, The Abandon Project set up several fundraisers throughout Charlotte to raise funds for their year-round, community empowerment vision in the Wallace Woods neighborhood. Chipotle, City BBQ, and even Kendra Scott Jewelry store, all donated portions of their sales to The Abandon Project leading up the eagerly-anticipated #GivingTuesdayCLT celebration. With the funds raised, The Abandon Project was able to continue pouring into the lives of the kids they serve and building relationships with the community. 

Just over a month ago, the city of Charlotte united for a celebration of the arts called Charlotte SHOUT!– a festival showcasing the power art has to bring people together. Art provides a method of communication through which people of all cultures and backgrounds can express themselves. At OurBridge for Kids, they take this phenomenon and use it to nurture the children of the refugee and immigrant community in our city.

As the largest refugee resettlement city in North Carolina, Charlotte welcomes over 600 individuals in just one year’s time. What some struggle to recognize is that refugee and immigrant children wrestle with uniquely complex struggles such as family separation, life in refugee camps, cultural shock and language barriers, while at the same time, trying to understand a new culture and new social expectations.

“I blame Walt Disney.  It’s all his fault,” Steve Parker, the founder of FOCHUS says when asked how it all began.

“We (Steve & Susanne Parker) came to Charlotte in 2010 to work with refugees through a ministry called Apartment Life. We moved into a low-income apartment community on Charlotte’s east side, which at the time was ground zero for refugee resettlement in the city. There were five apartments housing Montagnard (pronounced mon TUHN yahrd) refugee families from Vietnam.  There were eight kids in those families between grades K-5, and they discovered our Disney movie collection and iPads. Because of that, they started hanging out in our apartment, watching our movies and playing with our technology. And we gradually just fell in love with these kids. So we began to think, ‘What can we do to help them get off to a good start in this country?’”

105 words rest beneath the Statue of Liberty.

They were written 136 years ago.

Time has taken its toll on the brass inscription.

The words, once crisp, have faded.

And maybe, their meaning has too.

Every two seconds, someone around the world is displaced from their home. Driven away from everything they know by violence, war, or relentless prosecution.

68 million people — 43 since you started reading this article.

And the clock keeps ticking, and ticking, and ticking. 25 million are refugees. Forced to leave their home country, looking, as we all are, for a chance at a better life.