With the [partially] reinstated travel ban it’s kind of a discouraging time for refugees and those who believe in human dignity. It’s a good time for all of us to support those who work every day to help the survivors of war, disease and other plights the Ivankas and Jareds will never face to make their way in a new country.
One place that does this is Refuge Coffee, in my town of Clarkston, Georgia. You may have heard of Clarkston—the most diverse square mile (or two or three, it’s a slogan) in the Southeast, if not the U.S. We have about 40 different languages spoken in our community of under 8,000. Most of those languages are also heard in places like Burma. Kurdistan. Somalia. Syria. The list goes on.
Refuge Coffee is an utterly amazing little non-profit that in a little over two years has become a place that unites these folks with each other, with painfully WASPy people like me, with our African-American community, and with communities outside Clarkston that like to think of themselves as progressive :). The mission is pretty simple: providing employment and job-training opportunities to resettled refugees, to create a unique, welcoming gathering place in Clarkston, and to tell a more beautiful refugee story to Atlanta.
Physically, Refuge Coffee is two coffee trucks, really good coffee, and an old gas station/car dealership lot they’ve been renting for about two years. The last is where I hope some of my fellow Kossacks come in. They need to buy the place or be forced to move. This is a straight-up hope that we can help them out, and maybe share this with someone who can really help them out. They’ve set up a page for just this purpose:
www.purecharity.com/… Please take a look. And to read more about Refuge Coffee’s story, check here:
refugecoffeeco.com and here:
www.facebook.com/…
For the record, my connection with Refuge Coffee is as a customer and a member of this community, nothing else.
Thanks