While politics on the national level may have taken over many headlines in recent weeks, an international crisis is still being watched by many people around the world.
Two boys celebrate in the airport after officially entering the U.S. as registered refugees.
A small but growing group of people in Newtown, CT are still watching the humanitarian crisis that has been unfolding overseas in recent years. In particular, these people have been touched enough by the Syrian refugee crisis that they have decided to do something about it.
Rick Chamiec-Case and Gordon Williams are serving as the chairman and vice chairman, respectively, of a local group that is planning to help a refugee family from the Middle East or Africa become resettled in the Newtown area. The group — Interfaith Partnership for Refugee Resettlement (IPRR) — has developed out of a common interest among a growing number of members of Trinity Episcopal Church, of which Mr Chamiec-Case is a member, and Newtown Congregational Church, of which Mr Williams is a member.
“We’d like to help support a family that has been displaced because of war, oppression, or fear for their lives,” said Mr Chamiec-Case. “We would like to help them settle, and give them hope, compared to the place they left.”