U.S. charity donates dolls to local refugees

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This article was published 14/11/2018 (2521 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If being kind is in your mission statement, World Kindness Day is a pretty big deal.

For a Minnesota charity that seeks to brighten the lives of refugee children, it meant reaching across the border to Winnipeg’s Welcome Place.

On Tuesday, the head of Don’t Cry…I’m Here — an organization that donates culturally sensitive dolls and teddy bears to refugee children — met up with Welcome Place workers in Fargo, N.D., to present them with 40 toys for recently arrived refugee children across the border in Canada.

“The fact that they chose us was incredible,” said Rita Chahal, executive director of the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council which runs Welcome Place. The Winnipeg-based non-profit helps refugees get settled and assists refugee claimants seeking protection in Canada.

“What’s happening in the U.S. is fewer refugees are coming in,” said Chahal, who drove to Fargo with a small group from Welcome Place for the meeting to mark the 2018 edition of World Kindness Day.

The number of refugees entering the United States has fallen to historic lows, due to increased scrutiny officials in U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration say is necessary for security. Critics say it amounts to an abandonment of the country’s historic humanitarian role and discriminates against certain groups, particularly Muslims.

The Minnesota charity representatives said the group just wants to provide some comfort to children finding refuge in a new land.

“I want every little girl to have and hug a doll that resembles her and dresses similarly,” especially refugee girls who are afraid in their new land, executive director Gail Harvey said on the charity’s Facebook page. “How comforting this doll can be during this uncertain adjustment time.”

Don’t Cry…I’m Here — a non-profit with U.S. charitable status — focuses on the cities of Minneapolis, Saint Paul and St. Cloud. It donates teddy bears, dolls, doll clothing and accessories to newly arrived refugee children between the ages of four and 11, “to love, hug, talk to, cry with and laugh with while adjusting to a new land.”

The gift pack includes a doll or bear dressed in clothing that matches a recipient’s cultural traditions — from the Karen minority forced to flee Myanmar, Ethiopia and other refugee-producing countries. The doll is to help children “to learn nurturing skills, typically learned from parents, but now compromised due to survival in dangerous situations and refugee camps.”

Winnipeg hasn’t seen a huge surge in the recent number of refugee claimants arriving from the U.S., Chahal said. There has been more of a slow, steady stream of “secondary migration” — families with young children who crossed into Canada at Ontario and Quebec and are making their way west to Winnipeg to resettle.

Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council’s annual report said its in-Canada protection services at Welcome Place helped 940 refugee claimants in 2017-18, compared to 552 the previous year. Its settlement services helped 626 privately sponsored and 209 government-assisted refugees get settled that year, the report said.

Welcome Place was contacted by the Minnesota charity in August.

“This organization decided to donate their dolls to us,” Chahal said. She expects the toys will be distributed to new arrivals in early December.

“They could’ve continued to give dolls to anyone else, and they chose us,” she said. “As their neighbour, they know about our work.”

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca