Eraste Bishazi was just 21 years old when he arrived in Columbia in 2014.
“When I came to America, I came as a refugee,” he said. “I’m originally from the Congo, but I came from Kenya.”
A care coordinator with a local resettlement agency came to check on his family in their home every week.
Bishazi said the agency’s support was essential for his and his family’s adjustment, but refugees also looked out for each other. Over the years, Bishazi said other refugees would regularly call him for assistance.
"It was just basic things like helping them find a job and doing some paperwork they need for school,” he said.
Recently, Bishazi began applying his skills to his new job as a Career Empowerment Specialist for City of Refuge, a local refugee support organization that was founded in 2010 to help people throughout Mid-Missouri.
The organization’s services have expanded since Bishazi first came to the US, now including language and literacy classes, job assistance and even a preschool program for children ages 3 to 5.
Garrett Rucinski is the director of engagement at City of Refuge. He said the organization provides added support for them.
“We work to serve the refugee population through relational care, education and development,” he said. “We're about empowering.”
Recently, the organization opened City Cuisine, a fusion food truck and catering service supervised by Nathan Lehr.
“We teach person-to-person interaction that helps with their English through the working of the register,” Lehr said. “We also teach them how to use each machine so that they could go work in a kitchen if they wanted to.”
But the federal grant that has helped fund these efforts will end on Oct. 1. Rucinski said the impact of funding cuts and the elimination of federal grants is already being felt by City of Refuge and other organizations in the Midwest.
“There was a family who heard from their resettlement agency in Iowa, ‘I'm sorry, we've run out of funding, and tomorrow is your last day in this hotel.’” he said. “[The family] reached out to a friend who happened to live here in Columbia. The family from Columbia drove up, picked up that whole family and brought them here.”
And amid trying to make up for the loss of roughly 40 percent of their overall budget, City of Refuge is taking on an entirely new role.
In early March, Catholic Charities of Central and Northern Missouri announced they would be ending their refugee resettlement program amid federal funding cuts. Around the same time, the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement announced they will no longer provide funds to nonprofit agencies who run resettlement programs.
Paul Costigan is the refugee coordinator for the Missouri Office of Refugee Administration (MO-ORA). He said Missouri is one of 14 states that uses nonprofits as a Replacement Designee for running refugee resettlement programs.
“[The state] decided that nonprofits could do this administration better back in 2018,” he said. “But now it's kind of being forced back on the state to do the to do the administrative work.”
MO-ORA has been administering Missouri’s resettlement funds since 2018. Costigan said refugee coordinators in other states have told him their states plan on redistributing the funds back to them.
"They don't have the capacity, the staffing, the structure or the systems and databases to administer [funds] quickly,” he said.
City of Refuge has agreed to take over the responsibilities Catholic Charities once had of helping people find shelter, work and more during their first 9 months in the country.
Rucinski said the organization is also exploring alternative funding sources to offset the loss of their grant.
City of Refuge hopes to expand their thrift store, City Boutique, which currently brings in roughly 12 percent of their revenue.
The organization also launched a fundraising campaign to get 1,000 monthly donors to give $50 before the grant’s Oct. 1 expiration. Since the effort began, the organization has met 18% of its goal.
Eraste Bishazi drives people to and from classes every week where they learn digital literacy and English. He said he is excited to be able to give back and help others who are now in the same position he was in 2014.
“I decided to come and join the place that first welcomed me to welcome others,” he said.
For now, City of Refuge looks forward to helping more people call Columbia home.
