NST Continues To Help Afghan Family Adjust, Children Start School
After arriving in Falmouth almost three weeks ago, the five eldest children of the Javed family who recently came from Afghanistan, have started school.
The Javeds have six children, the youngest of which is just 5 months old. The other children, however, started school last week and have been settling into their respective kindergarten, 1st-, 3rd-, 4th-, and 8th-grade classrooms. Neighborhood Support Team Cape Cod has been working closely with the Falmouth School Department to make sure the youngsters had everything that they needed for school, including new backpacks stocked with school supplies.
“The Falmouth school department has done a stellar job of planning for their arrival, even alerting the bus drivers who welcomed them aboard into reserved seats up front,” wrote Marguerite McElroy, an NST leader, in an update last week. “Classmates were eager to greet them, having practiced how to say ‘welcome’ in the Pashto language. New friends were at their sides, assuring they were not alone at lunch or recess. They returned home eager to show off their new vocabulary and the materials they were given to practice it.”
NST has yet to secure a full-time translator who is local, but Ms. McElroy said that communication between the family and the English speakers they work so closely with has been easier because of the children’s propensity for learning new words and building an English vocabulary.
“Every day they sing the alphabet song and tell us the new words they’ve learned,” Ms. McElroy said.
The parents are also getting ESL lessons, courtesy of the co-chairs of NST’s education committee. Additionally, the father is getting job and interview preparation help from NST to help him secure a job. Ms. McElroy said that the Community Health Center of Cape Cod has also been a major help, setting the family up with primary care physicians and helping them navigate the many avenues of health care.
Ms. McElroy said that the turnout for volunteers and help from the community has been astounding and that NST’s committee heads have been invaluable resources, as many of them have professional backgrounds in the field they are volunteering for.
“The team is structured so that from [an immense number of] volunteers, we picked perhaps overqualified professionals so that [the committees] can operate mostly autonomously,” Ms. McElroy said.
Falmouth is poised to receive two more resettlement placements, likely by the end of January, but details like who the placements are and when they will arrive are still to be determined. Ideally, Ms. McElroy said, the additional placements will also be Pashto speakers and will be able to establish a micro-community for themselves within Falmouth and feel more comfortable and at home with people who share their culture and language.
As things currently stand, Ms. McElroy says that the reception from the town itself has been wonderful. The family has been able to attend community events like the Christmas Parade and has even been given tours around Falmouth to meet some of the people in town and familiarize themselves with the area. For Ms. McElroy, Falmouth and its community are what have made this massive challenge run so smoothly and successfully.
“The vision is one of empowerment,” she said. “I knew [Falmouth] was the little engine that could.”
Moving forward, NST is still looking to secure funds that will enable them to support the Javed family as they currently have no income. They are also seeking more permanent housing options, should the family decide to stay in Falmouth, as the current home the Javeds are living in is seasonal.
Anyone interested in learning more about the Neighborhood Support Team’s mission resettling Afghan families is encouraged to send an email to NSTCapeCod@gmail.com. Donations are also still being accepted and checks can be made out to Waquoit Congregational Church, with a note in the memo field NST Cape Cod, and mailed to 15 Parsons Lane in Waquoit.