Looking at 2023 and 2024
“2023 was an amazing year,” Christi Armstrong, our executive director shared. “The things that happened in 2023 were spectacular.”
World Relief resettled people from Syria, the Congo, Sudan, Venezuela, Colombia…a total of 36 countries in 2023! This amounted to 461 individuals, 202 of whom were children. Programs have expanded, and so has World Relief’s footprint in Spokane. The Education Center hosted 19 courses over the year; women made up over half of the 186 participants.
After 31 years in Spokane, World Relief has outgrown its current building on Washington. We are relocating – keeping a presence in Spokane with offices at City Covenant Church, 512 S Bernard – but adding a Spokane Valley location—11707 E Sprague Ave. in the Redwood Plaza – as well.
“We love Spokane and we have a big footprint here and we’ve got lots of community partners in Spokane,” said Christi. “We are not leaving.”
However, we are expanding to Spokane Valley in order to take advantage of additional housing and employment for our clients, as well as establishing relationships with new church and business partners.
Ways to get involved in 2024
When World Relief meets people at the airport, we meet people who are exhausted. They have been on overseas flights, often with several children and a few layovers. It is at this point they are welcomed to Spokane by volunteers and community members.
“We are so excited to see them. And we are a little terrified too,” Christi said, because we know the challenges that await and how finite the resources can be.
At World Relief, thanks to government contracts and a caring community, we have great basic services to get refugees started. The Resettlement team secures a first-time home for the family and gets the apartment set up.
Volunteers are helping at every step of the way. Currently, World Relief has 216 active volunteers.
Volunteers grocery shop and drive new arrivals to medical appointments. Volunteers practice English and teach new arrivals how to navigate the bus system. Volunteers even have the opportunity to teach classes with the Education Center.
Volunteers account for over 7,000 hours in this office. That is a lot! But the need is even greater.
“It’s not enough,” Christi said. We need more volunteers, more donations of gently used furniture, cleaning supplies and bedding. “If you were able to see these people come off the airplanes and see the hope in their faces…and the tiredness,” Christi said, “you would be cleaning out your closets and getting everything you don’t use every day and bringing it to the office so we could give them to these people.”
Coming home to a nice warm bed and waking up with the ability to cook breakfast can be taken for granted. Refugees do not arrive with much…often just a bag or two. Everything they used to have is
gone. Last year, over $177,000 worth of furniture, hygiene items, clothing and kitchen supplies were donated to World Relief.
These donations gave hope to our new neighbors. They helped to stretch the limited government dollars and create homes for new arrivals.
Financial donations make a difference too.
“In America we are a wealthy nation. We have a lot and we have people coming who have nothing. They have a bag or two of things.
“A few dollars, or thousands of dollars for that matter, would help us to build more programs, more support, give them more of the things they need.”
An invitation from Christi Armstrong
When I came on staff at World Relief, I had no idea what I was getting into. None. And it was hard. I questioned whether I was in the right place at the right time.
Ten years later, it has wrecked my world. It has changed everything for me, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. I want to invite you to have that same experience. To experience walking alongside people who are very different from you. It will really change who you are.
It will impact you as much as it impacts them.