What happens when an anthill is destroyed?: hotel in Transcarpathia provides home for displaced people

The International Institute of Minnesota’s refugee resettlement program finds and prepares apartments for refugee families moving to the state. Through a combination of donations and buying new or used items, the organization stocks the home with all of the essentials, groceries, and furniture. And volunteers help set it all up.

Riverton Park United Methodist Church has become a shelter for people navigating the immigration and asylum process, hosting 200 to 500 people in the past year. The church recently received $500,000 in donations, spending the majority of it on supplies, staffing, legal assistance and other resources and services to continue supporting refugees.

The Refugee House — also known as Teremok — provides a safe place to stay for Belarusians and Ukranians fleeing turmoil in their homelands. Through a partnership with the Italian aid charity organization Progetto Sud Institute, The Refugee House also provides food and other basic necessities like blankets and pillows. So far, more than 20 families – about 150 people – have lived at the Refugee House.

In Nogales, Mexico, La Casa de Misericordia y de Todas Las Naciones provides food, shelter, and education to migrants while they work through the process of applying for asylum in the United States.

The community-founded Claire Aid Foundation raised money on social media to rebuild houses that were destroyed in Jebbu Miango after a violent attack on the town left families displaced and unable to afford to return.

The Myanmar Curriculum pilot project allows Rohingya children living in Bangladeshi refugee camps to be educated with the curriculum and language of their native country. The aim to make an eventual return to their home country easier. So far, 200,000 children have been enrolled, mostly in grades 1 through 4. UNICEF plans to scale the program to cover all 410,000 school-age children in the camps.

The Pallium for Ukraine initiative organizes evacuations through Polland for seriously ill children and their families in Ukraine. Along the way, and after the journey, the organization provides them with safe places to stay, medicines, and anything else they need.

Bangladesh has developed a multi-layered early warning system for disasters that includes good weather monitoring equipment, communication systems to broadcast warnings, and importantly, a network of trusted volunteers – half of which are women – who go out into communities to share information and urge people to evacuate to shelters. The opportunity has also empowered women, both as volunteers and with the ability to make the decision to evacuate during a natural disaster.

The Myanmar Curriculum pilot project provides education to Rohingya children living in Bangladeshi refugee camps. The students attend classes in both English and in Burmese, which ensures that the children will know their native language and facilitate an eventual return to their country. There are 3,400 learning centers serving 300,000 students that are run by UN agencies and NGOs, where the successful pilot project will eventually be scaled to.

Donating frequent flyer miles is a powerful way to help people experiencing disaster. Miles4Migrants, which typically transports Syrian refugee families, is using crowdsourced miles to reunite migrant families separated in the United States.