The COVID-19 pandemic reaffirms the necessity of Naturalize Charlotte’s mission to inform, assist, and uplift Charlotte’s refugee and immigrant community.
When Foster and I decided to work together to build Naturalize Charlotte as a community resource, our aim was to support refugees and immigrants in Charlotte striving to become United States citizens by connecting them to information and assistance. Naturalize Charlotte has sought to fulfill that aim through the guidance available on the www.NaturalizeCharlotte.org website and through the coordinated services of the Naturalize Charlotte Group. As the entire nation faces the COVID-19 pandemic, Foster and I believe that it is now also part of Naturalize Charlotte’s mission to assist Charlotte’s refugee and immigrant community with the medical and financial concerns that COVID-19 poses. COVID-19 has created new barriers and obstacles for Charlotte’s resilient refugee and immigrant community, and we are committed to helping address them.
Foster and I are inspired by the work that Member Organizations in the Naturalize Charlotte Group are doing to continue to be of assistance to their clients. Several are expanding and adapting their services to help address medical and financial needs that COVID-19 has created. Foster and I are committed to ensuring that the Naturalize Charlotte website stays up-to-date with multilingual resources and assistance to be utilized by Charlotte’s refugee and immigrant community. With USCIS’s naturalization services having been impacted by COVID-19, we understand that the immediate concerns of Charlotte’s refugee and immigrant community lie beyond citizenship. We are committed to the health and well-being of the community that Naturalize Charlotte serves.
We have developed a fully-multilingual, dedicated COVID-19 resources page that includes the status of Naturalize Charlotte Member Organizations, documents detailing the government’s stay at home order, infographics with health details about COVID-19 from the Centers for Disease Control, details about CMS meal distribution, a list of information hotlines, and more.
We have also posted an entry in the Naturalize Charlotte blog with details on how interested Charlotteans can volunteer their time, skills, and financial resources to help those who are most vulnerable to the adverse impacts that COVID-19 has brought to Charlotte.
Foster and I are actively coordinating with Emily Yaffe, the City of Charlotte’s Immigrant Integration Specialist, and the Executive Directors of all Naturalize Charlotte Member Organizations to continue to adapt the website to meet the community’s needs at this time. Please reach out to Foster and me at naturalizeclt@gmail.com with your questions, comments, and suggestions related to keeping the Naturalize Charlotte website up-to-date with COVID-19 information and resources.