Journey's End Refugee Services, Inc.

JERS logo Journey's End Refugee Services 184 Barton Street; Buffalo, NY 14213

Services

Journey's End offers an array of services to refugees resettled into Western New York. These include resettlement services, education services, employment services, immigration and citizenship services, and interpreting services.

Resettlement Services
Journey’s End staff, volunteers, and church co-sponsors assist refugees in resettling. Journey’s End work begins before refugees arrive; Journey’s End staff, volunteers, and friendship partners assist with securing apartments prior to refugees’ arrival, collecting and delivering household items including furniture and kitchen items. Then, volunteers or staff welcome refugees or refugee families at the airport, prepare a welcoming warm meal for their first day in the United States, and invite new arrivals to events, meals, or outings and they transition to their new lives in the United States.

Securing housing, food, household times, clothing, and personal essentials. Journey’s End staff, volunteers, and friendship partners assist with securing apartments prior to refugees’ arrival, collecting and delivering household items including furniture and kitchen items.

Offering general orientation to American culture.

Offering referrals to medical services.

Education Services

Refugee School Impact Program
Mission Statement
To bridge the cultural and linguistic gaps that exists between refugee
families and schools and to provide children with academic and social
supports to aid in the promotion of success.

The Refugee School Impact Program is a grant-funded program through the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA) designed to ease the transition of refugee children into the Buffalo Public School system and to empower parents to be effective partners in the education of their children.

Who is eligible?
The RSIP provides services to refugee students, grades K through 12, and their families.

Services:
Academic Coaching: Our multilingual academic coaches provide a wide range of services to refugee students, their parents, and schools. These services include mentoring, advocacy, counseling, tutoring, problem solving, mediation, in-class support assistance, parent-teacher conferences, homework assistance, and crisis intervention.

Translation and Interpretation: Our academic coaches can meet your translation needs for various languages, including Arabic, Burmese, Dinka, Karen, Mai-Mai, Somali, Swahili, and Thai.

Orientation Services:

Welcome To Our Schools Family Orientation

A monthly meeting aimed at parents whose children have just entered school (Grades K-12), to learn about the American school system and to have their questions answered by our academic coaches and program staff.

Cross-Cultural Seminar for Schools

A free training session provided to Buffalo Public Schools that desire to learn more about refugee issues and how to better accommodate their needs.

Refugee Academics
A four-week program run during the summer months to help orientate newly arrived students to the American school system. The program focuses on English language acquisition, classroom orientation, and introduction to American curriculum, schedules, and activities. The program is run in conjunction with the Buffalo Public Schools Jumpstart Program, and also in partnership with WNY Americorps and Houghton College.

Let's Go to the Library
A library-based education program for refugee students and their families. Community volunteers and refugee families come together on Saturday afternoons at the Niagara Branch Library to work on a number of different educational and recreational activities. Families are able to connect to positive role models in their community while practicing English and learning more about the educational resources that exist in their community.

Intercultural Competency Training

In 2002, The University at Buffalo’s School of Family Medicine forged a collaborative with Journey's End Refugee Services to help in preparing its medical students to work with individuals from a variety of cultures. Intercultural competency training was added to the school’s curriculum and, as a result, dozens of medical students have become immersed in the cultures of incoming refugee groups. Since then, Journey’s End has offered cultural competency training to a range of organizations to provide individuals with tools for effective cross-cultural interaction.

Journey’s End provides customized training to groups of individuals wishing to expand knowledge and effectiveness at working in a culturally diverse world. Educators, law enforcement agencies, clergy, childcare workers, and other service providers are encouraged to participate. Skilled presenters help develop self-awareness regarding ethnicity and culture, expand understanding of and appreciation for the growing cultural diversity of our country, and enhance communication skills of individuals from different cultures.

Training sessions can be arranged to meet your group’s needs and budget. If you wish to explore this, or to suggest other ways to share creative alliances, please contact the Executive Director.

Employment Services

Since 1999, Journey's End Refugee Services has been offering employment services. Launched through a grant from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), the original program set an ambitious goal of placing all employable refugee clients into full-time positions by their fourth month in the U.S. – a goal that still remains. By the end of the first year of this program, 95% of all employable clients had been placed in gainful employment and were moving their families toward economic self-reliance.

Building on this success, Journey's End Refugee Services has expanded employment services, and now offers comprehensive job preparation and placement services to any refugee, asylee, or victim of human trafficking that resides in the Buffalo area. Services include:

assistance with English skills, resume writing, work etiquette, and interview preparation;
assistance locating potential employers and securing jobs;
assistance after job placement to ensure a successful transition occurs.

If you are interested in our employment services or have a job opening, please contact our Employment Specialist.

Immigration and Citizenship Services

Started in 2002 with funding from the New York State Bureau of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance and Erie County, The Western New York Citizenship Express reaches out to permanent residents of Erie and Niagara Counties to educate and encourage them to become U.S. citizens.

The WNY Citizenship Express offers a full range of naturalization services including:

Free Information Workshops
Free Eligibility Interviews
Assistance filing the Application for Naturalization (N-400)
Assisting with Medical Waivers (N-648) and Fee Waivers
Required Photographs
Legal advice and representation
Referrals to English classes and tutors
Free home-study lessons in US History and Government
Application Tracking
Interview Preparation

Interpreting Services

JERS’ Interpreting Services Department offers professional, high quality service in languages needed to do business in a global society. These services are ideal for health and human organizations, educational institutions, legal and government agencies, and corporations.

JERS

Journey's End Refugee Services, Inc. - Making Strangers Neighbors
184 Barton Street - Buffalo, NY 14213
Phone: (716) 882-4963 - Fax (716) 882-4977