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Banquet helps build support, welcome for Karen refugees
At the banquet, several Karen refugees who arrived between May and July pose with a sponsor and interpreter.
Photo: Barbara Witmer
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Lancaster, Pennsylvania -- U.S. resettlement of Karen refugees from Burma was the focus of the first annual ecumenical banquet sponsored by the Church World Service Lancaster, Pennsylvania, office in August. The goal was to promote churches' understanding of, and response to, the needs of their new Karen neighbors.
The more than 130 attendees contributed over $3,000 to benefit the CWS Karen Resettlement Program in Lancaster. CWS Lancaster Director Sheila McGeehan further urged local congregations to co-sponsor a Karen family or individual, a commitment that includes three to six months of social support to help newly resettled refugees achieve early self-sufficiency.
Co-sponsors "act as a friend and advocate for them as they begin their new life far from their homeland, relatives and friends," she said.
Nationally, CWS has resettled more than 1,000 Karen and Chin refugees from Burma to 30 U.S. communities so far this year. Several dozen of the Karen now live in Lancaster, Elizabethtown, Strasburg, Millersville, and York, Pa., where a number have found employment and some attended English classes over the summer. Additional arrivals are anticipated throughout FY2008.
Lancaster banquet speakers Duane and Marcia Binkley have been appointed jointly by the American Baptist Churches and Cooperative Baptist Fellowship to equip U.S. churches to welcome Karen refugees resettling to their communities. They previously worked among Karen refugees living along the Thailand-Burma border.
A substantial number of Karen are Christians whose ancestors responded to the message first brought to them by Baptist missionary Adoniram Judson nearly 200 years ago. The Binkleys recalled that heritage in their address, describing the history and plight of the Karen people under Burma’s military regime, their unwavering Christian faith through generations of oppression, and the real needs that mark their lives in a time of transition and culture shock.
 Sheila McGeehan with Rev. Donald Sensenig. Photo: Barbara Witmer
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Among those attending the August 17 banquet was Ken George, American Baptist National Ministries' director of Direct Human Services, who has worked with CWS as it has partnered with American Baptists in resettlement ministries and whose office provided financial support for the banquet.
At the banquet, CWS Lancaster presented Rev. Donald Sensenig with its first Distinguished Refugee Resettlement Service Award for his longtime work with Lancaster area refugees and Lancaster’s Southeast Asian community. A retired pastor, Sensenig belongs to Stumptown Mennonite Church.
Presbyterian, United Methodist, Brethren, and nondenominational churches also were among the faith communities represented at the banquet.
"We plan to make this banquet an annual event, each year raising up a new refugee group or concern," McGeehan said.
The ecumenical banquet is part of CWS Lancaster's ongoing outreach to area churches, colleges, social service and government agencies, media, and the community at large through mailings, meetings, and events, including a film festival and World Refugee Day celebration. "We definitely have raised our profile in the community," McGeehan said.
By Rich Schramm, member of Westgate Baptist Church in Lancaster and former communications director, American Baptist Churches (U.S.A.)
See also: York church cluster renovates house for new refugee arrivals
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