Welcoming Newcomers Steering Committee
Watch “To Breathe Free” - a short documentary and winner of "Best Documentary Short" at the Covellite International Film Festival 2017 - the story of two refugee families and our church’s desire to walk alongside them.
CCPC has a long history of sponsoring refugees and asylum seekers. In the 1970s, we sponsored two Vietnamese families who were war refugees. In recent years, we sponsored a Syrian refugee family that came in 2016, a father and young son seeking asylum from Guatemala in 2019, and a family from Afghanistan in 2021. We continue to maintain relationships with these families and benefit from the cultural exchange.
In each case, CCPC has helped provide housing, furniture, and English tutoring, and helped them enroll their children in school, apply for health benefits, seek jobs, open bank accounts, learn to use public transportation and a myriad of other things needed to adjust to their new country.
Because CCPC was a very early sponsor during the wave of Syrian refugees, our example led other congregations in our area to decide to become sponsors and our welcoming committee members have mentored many churches and synagogues on how to do it. Our work was also featured in an award-winning documentary “To Breathe Free,” linked above.
An outgrowth of our work was a new nonprofit, Solutions in Hometown Connections started by CCPC Member Merritt Groeschel, to support many more refugees in our area. We partner with SHC in our refugee work and CCPC members serve on the board and volunteer as tutors.
