Amanda Wallace, a volunteer with Member Club United Soccer, coaches and plays soccer with Afghan guests during a two-day soccer and futsal event hosted by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Indiana Soccer Association as part of Operations Allies Welcome at Camp Atterbury on Nov. 9. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is one of many organizations providing volunteers to help Afghan refugees at Camp Atterbury.
SUBMITTED PHOTO BY SGT. TRINITY CARTER.
For nearly four months, lives have been transformed at Camp Atterbury on a daily basis.
As more than 7,200 Afghan refugees came to the southern Johnson County military base on their path to a new life, military personnel and government officials provided them with housing, medical care, education and other resources.
But the displaced Afghans had a myriad of other needs. Clothing and household items donated by the community had to be organized and distributed. Some refugees needed translators, while others wanted to start learning English. They needed recreation, stress relief and friendship in the face of unmatched hardship.
An army of volunteers stepped forward.
“We’re called to do this work, as humans,” said Phuong Nguyen-Fay, a volunteer with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. “It’s not just one organization; it’s multiple organizations working together. That’s the wonderful thing about being in America, is that we are allowed to do that. We don’t have to justify the work we do, only in the sense of protecting people who can’t do it for themselves otherwise.”
Since refugees started arriving at Atterbury in early September, area nonprofit organizations and volunteer groups have dedicated themselves to assisting in any way possible. They’ve provided language lessons, helped sort and distribute clothing, assisted organizations with the resettlement process and provided outlets for recreation.
Having the opportunity to serve in this way is a small measure of humanity to help people who have faced such difficulty.
“It’s been one of the most rewarding, humbling experiences I’ve ever had,” said Justin Springer, base lead at Atterbury for Save Our Allies. “If you’ve traveled at all, if you’ve been to places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, you realize how lucky we are here.”
The nationwide effort to support and resettle 74,000 Afghan refugees who fled Taliban rule is known as Operation Allies Welcome. Led by the Department of Homeland Security, the effort brought these refugees to eight “safe havens” located around the country.
One of those safe havens was Camp Atterbury.
The first refugees arrived at the base on Sept. 3, and kept arriving daily. In response to the overwhelming needs of the refugees as they start their new lives, numerous local churches, organizations and businesses stepped up to provide aid. Clothing, hygiene items, diapers, shoes and a myriad of other donations came flooding in.
Area nonprofits and other organizations offered manpower to assist as best they could.
One of those groups was the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, or USCCB. The wide-reaching organization aimed at organizing and conducting religious, charitable and social welfare work both in the country and around the world. The group also is devoted to aiding education and caring for immigrants.
Through its Migration and Refugee Services, the organization aims to protect the life and dignity of all people, by welcoming, protecting, promoting and integrating refugees, those seeking asylum, migrants, unaccompanied children and victims of human trafficking.
That mission has been on full display during the group’s work at Atterbury.
“We have had numerous volunteers from churches, universities, service organizations, corporations and more. Volunteers have been essential to our ability to provide exceptional services and support to our Afghan brothers and sisters during this Operation Allies Welcome mission,” said Jane Gehlhausen, USCCB site director at Camp Atterbury.
Nguyen-Fay offered her service to USCCB as soon as refugees started arriving in the United States. For her, the cause was deeply personal. She and her family came to the states as refugees from South Vietnam 46 years ago. She experienced how refugee relief organizations are vitally important to those coming into the country, and has been in refugee relief her entire life.
“It’s something that stays with you, even though I was very young,” she said. “The one thing that compelled me to volunteer here were all of the stories my family has told me.”
She had helped with logistics coordination — serving as a liaison between her church, St. Bartholomew Catholic Church in Columbus, and other churches and organizations, to bring donated items to Atterbury.
But she has done everything from sweeping floors to volunteering to drive interpreters around the base to helping with English classes for the refugees.
“I’ve given out yarn because (for) a lot of these women, knitting is what keeps them calm and lowers their stress levels. It helps them cope with a lot of the things they dealt with,” Nguyen-Fay said. ”We try to do things that will give them comfort and also help them learn.”
Save Our Allies formed as U.S. service members rallied around the translators and others who had helped them during their service in Afghanistan. As the country fell, they worked together with contacts and the U.S. state department to have those interpreters and their families transported to safety.
About 12,000 interpreters and others were saved though the effort, which was important because they had been so vital to the mission in Afghanistan, said Springer, who had served in Iraq.
“If you have been over there, you get to these countries and it’s like you’re blind. Then someone shows up and it’s like they give you glasses — they know the community, they speak the language, they are worth their weight in gold,” he said.
Once the interpreters were safely evacuated, Save Our Allies shifted their efforts to support Operation Allies Welcome at the eight military bases where refugees were housed, including Atterbury.
“We’ve been filling in gaps in many different areas, from logistics to community work and other things,” Springer said. “Once the ‘safe havens’ close, we’ll continue to help with resettlement. Twelve months from now, they are still going to need some support, so we’re thinking about how we can support that mission long-term.”
Save Our Allies volunteers are primarily focused on sorting and organizing at the supply warehouse on base, where they’re helping make sure the abundance of items that have been donated get to the people who need them.
“Indiana shines in terms of donations, and there’s so much out there that we’re coordinating how to get these items to other areas,” Springer said.
Springer also helps direct and manage other organizations that want to come to Atterbury to help. He makes sure those visits go smoothly, to the benefit of both the refugees and the groups providing assistance.
For example, he helped connect refugees with the a group of Indiana residents from Afghanistan and other parts of central Asia to provide a support system and extended help.
To help raise the spirits of everyone at Atterbury, Springer has also arranged musicians, comedians and other entertainers to perform there.
Sometimes, he simply makes himself available to assist with simple tasks. In early December, he offered to drive one of the refugee families to the airport as they started their resettlement journey. Springer spoke with the father of the family, a 37-year-old similar to himself. Their conversation emphasized how much people in general have in common, even if they come from two places across the world from one another.
“His kids were in the backseat behind, yapping and kicking the seat just like my kids would. You realize that they’re just human beings,” he said. “Had they not gotten out, who knows what would have happened to them. But now they get to grow up, go to school and just be kids.”
The mission at Atterbury is drawing to a close, as the refugees who have come to the base have been assigned the communities they will resettle in. Officials anticipate the safe haven operations to wind down after Jan. 1.
But organizations such as the USCCB and Save Our Allies both plan to continue to be involved with the refugees moving forward.
Faith communities in Columbus have banded together to resettle four families in the city. Nguyen-Fay is working with those groups to ensure the refugee families have access to education, employment, health care and other needs.
For Save Our Allies, the focus remains on the work at the safe haven bases across the United States. But they’ve also seen how important it is to document this extraordinary time in history, as well as capture the human stories of the refugees, soldiers and troops who have been part of Operation Allies Welcome.
“We want to go a little bit bigger and document the story of the Afghan War by the people who lived it the most, to make sure those stories get told,” Springer said. “It’s slowly been forgotten in the media cycle already, and a year from now, we probably won’t hear anything about this. We want to make sure the voices continue to be told.”
