A group of Franciscan Sisters just gave the Iowa City Catholic Worker House a $10,000 gift to further our work helping asylum-seekers from around the world find safety in the United States.

Their award is a testament and recognition of the quality of the services we have demonstrated and our good work to date sponsoring refugees and helping them rebuild their lives in Iowa.

In the last two years, we have housed dozens of women and children from all over the world. We work closely with human rights groups on the border to win freedom for asylum-seekers being held in detention camps, reunite them with their families if possible, and help them find a new home here in the U.S., starting in our sanctuary community in Iowa City.

Ten thousand dollars is a great start to all the new work that is currently in front of us, but we need you to give today – anything you can – to match this single gift as a collective response from our entire Catholic Worker House community.

With all of your gifts combined, we want to match the $10,000 the Franciscan Sisters have so generously and prayerfully bestowed upon us to serve the immigrant and the stranger in our midst. Your gifts will allow us to do the following:

• Mount a robust asylum legal defense for a Honduran widow and her disabled son, who fled the country last year on foot with the Migrant Caravan. 
  
  
• Pay legal fees for an expecting El Salvadoran mother so she can stay in the country with her baby, who will be born a U.S. citizen any day now; as well as for her husband, who was deported to Mexico after they were both detained at the border. 
  
  
• Sponsorship costs to free several Honduran men from the detention camps at the border. These young men are all married but were forcibly separated from their wives, have strong asylum cases, and verifiably good characters.
  
  
• Other costs and expenses associated with refugee sponsorship and resettlement, including 1) transitional housing, 2) medical and prenatal care, 3) education and school enrollment, 4) English tutoring, 5) extracurricular activities, 6) transportation, 7) culturally-appropriate food and clothing, 8) religious services, and more.
  
  
• General support for all aspects of the hospitality ministry that makes our refugee sponsorship possible, including maintaining and upgrading our historic Victorian home, Free Little Food Pantry, weekend soup kitchen, and open house, drop-in center hours.

Will you join the Franciscan Sisters’ prayerful and powerful witness on World Refugee Day and give today?

Please donate now - and know that your gifts will be stewarded in the fashion we have already  demonstrated to help these refugee brothers and sisters in Christ.

God bless you,

Emily Sinnwell, David Goodner, and Araceli Benitez Moya
Trustees, Iowa City Catholic Worker House
P.O. Box 3324
Iowa City, Iowa  52244
www.iowacitycatholicworker.org 
www.facebook.com/iccatholicworker
iowacitycatholicworker@gmail.com