Office for New Americans has hotline for FREE STUFF in 200 languages
Gov. Hochul announces plans to provide housing, education resources to Afghan refugees
On Thursday, Governor Kathy Hochul announced partnerships and resources to provide a safe haven for Afghan evacuees in New York State.
This includes educational resources and temporary housing to support evacuees as they resettle.
“We can meet the challenges of today and tomorrow with compassion, imagination, and grit and there are vast resources across the state to give the Afghan evacuees a solid start here in the United States,” said Gov. Hochul. “This is a call to action, to uphold our state’s proud history of sheltering evacuees from persecution and violence. The arduous journey that thousands of Afghans have taken over the last few weeks is not the end, but rather the beginning of a new chapter that we can help them write.”
According to Gov. Hochul, The State University of New York will open its ten Education Opportunity Centers to refugees across the state. The university will also waive its 1-year residency requirement for admission.
Gov. Hochul says all refugees are encouraged to apply for free courses, certificate and credentialing programs, and mentorships for seeking post-secondary education.
SUNY will partner with the Rochester-based program, Keeping Our Promise to develop courses such as “English as a Second Language” tailored for Dari, Farsi, and Pashto speakers.
Collaboration between refugee resettlement providers and federal and state programs will be key to establishing a process to identify skills, training, talents, and background of individuals, Gov. Hochul said in a statement.
These collaborations will help build plans for the education and training of refugees as they begin to enter the workforce.
To assist with temporary housing needs, SUNY’s Buffalo State College campus partnered with Buffalo United for Afghan Refugees, a coalition of five Buffalo organizations.
The group is coordinating an initiative that will provide vacant dorm rooms to 100 evacuees as transitional housing.
They will also provide laptops to evacuees on-site to assist them with accessing educational programming.
It is expected that all individuals age 12 and older will be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 when they arrive on Buffalo State’s campus.
The Office for New Americans has a hotline to connect immigrants and refugees to free services across the state. The hotline runs Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. in over 200 languages. The hotline can be reached at 1-800-566-7636.
https://cnycentral.com/news/local/gov-hochul-announces-plans-to-provide-housing-education-resources-to-afghan-refugees
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