ANN ARBOR, MI - Hundreds of additional refugees fleeing countries around the world are expected to arrive in the Ann Arbor area over the next year.

Groups and individuals throughout the community are preparing to welcome their new neighbors with open arms and to provide them with the help and support they need as they make the transition to new lives in the United States.

Jewish Family Services of Washtenaw County, a nonprofit agency with offices on State Street in Ann Arbor, has been doing refugee resettlement work locally for many years under contract with the U.S. Department of State.

Last fiscal year, the agency resettled 82 refugees in Washtenaw County. At the end of this fiscal year on Sept. 30, it will have resettled about 175 more.

Refugees are coming here from places such as Syria, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Moldova and Bhutan.

In the next fiscal year starting Oct. 1, JFS is planning to resettle at least 300 more refugees here, an increase driven in part by the Syrian refugee crisis.

To be able to handle such a significant increase, JFS has launched an extensive collaboration with numerous congregations and faith-based organizations, recruiting and training a new Welcome Wagon volunteer corps.

"After 20-some years of resettling refugees in Washtenaw County, we are standing at sort of a very important moment where our numbers will just triple and quadruple in the next couple of years," said Anya Abramzon, executive director at JFS in Ann Arbor.

"And we know that what we do would be impossible to do without the whole community being behind us, so we met with the schools, we met with the health systems, and it's really a village effort, not just us."

JFS also is working with the city of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County on a new initiative to become a more welcoming community.

"We do have a staff representative assigned at the county level to run the initiative, and it just comes at a time when I think we need that support more than ever," Abramzon said. "We have been doing many different things to kind of bring the county and bring our partners in the community to this point, and we've been working with various faith communities and partners among our fellow nonprofit organizations, and the University of Michigan, Eastern Michigan University.

"We feel that we've sort of built the foundation for that work to go to the next level, which we're very happy about."

Going to the next level

Local projections for incoming refugees are based on information coming from the State Department and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Nationally, the number of refugees coming to the U.S. is expected to increase in the next year.

Without a significant increase in funding or staffing, JFS decided it will need many more volunteers to adequately serve 300-plus newly arriving refugees.

"We looked at the numbers that were forecast and it was just kind of so compelling that we need to have more volunteers," said Sarah Schneider Hong, programs and outreach director at JFS.

"So that brings us to what we call the JFS Welcome Wagon," she said. "What we're trying to do is put together a corps, if you will, that reflects an engaged community. That then circles back to reinforce that, as a welcoming community, we all have a stake in this, and we all have a role."

Ambassadors from various faith-based groups have been helping JFS recruit volunteers who are going through training.

Over the last two months, more than 120 volunteers have signed up to join the Welcome Wagon.

Volunteers go through an orientation with JFS so they can learn more about the agency and resettlement services, the clients being served, confidentiality and privacy rules, and the ins and outs of volunteer roles.

"We need volunteers to support our efforts, so we've come up with about 15 specific volunteer roles," Hong said.

Some of the volunteers will assist with moving refugees into new homes and apartments, including moving furniture, cleaning and getting things in order before refugees arrive. Some will help by doing grocery shopping.

Some will assist at the JFS food pantry. Others will act as English instructors or conversation partners, or help with cultural orientation and citizenship classes.

"They get to decide kind of what they want to do in this endeavor," Hong said of the volunteers who sign up. "So that's our Welcome Wagon."

There also are volunteer opportunities for people who want to be professional mentors.

"Let's say we're resettling a physician from Iraq and he or she is going through a recertification process professionally here," Hong said. "They can be paired with an actual physician from Washtenaw County who can share with them about the networking here, the culture of the hospitals here, and things like that."

Some of the volunteer roles, such as financial literacy instructors, require more specialized training. Financial literacy covers everything from budgeting to navigating the banking system here.

Learn more about volunteer opportunities

Volunteers who've signed up so far have come from Temple Beth Emeth, St. Clare's Episcopal Church, Blue Ocean Faith, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Green Road, First Congregational Church of Ann Arbor, Westminster Presbyterian Church and the Beth Israel Congregation.

"There are several people who are newer to the table beginning to work with us as well," Hong said, adding there are representatives from the Zen Buddhist Temple and Zingerman's Community of Businesses.

"A lot of the faith-based communities kind of feel called toward this," she said. "But if there is a small business out there, or a large business out there, and they have a culture of volunteerism and they want to be engaged in things that are going on in our community, then we invite them to the table as well."

Shrina Eadeh, resettlement program director at JFS, said the Islamic Center also has been really helpful in resettlement efforts.

"They're involved on more of a day-to-day scale," she said. "They provide food to our clients who maybe have to stay in a hotel for a night or two. They provide food and sort of that welcoming first visit for a lot of our clients."

JFS also points to City Council Member Chuck Warpehoski, director of the local Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, as an important partner.

Various faith communities have held resettlement drives, collecting gift cards and household goods that JFS case workers can use to help families resettle.

JFS also has partnered with St. Joseph Mercy Health System to provide health screenings for arriving refugees. St. Joseph Mercy's offices also have become the primary care providers for refugees.

"And then they've also made efforts to increase the resources they have available by finding pharmacies that speak our clients' languages and can also maybe deliver prescriptions," Eadeh said.

Increased community awareness

Abramzon said there seems to be increased awareness about refugee resettlement, and JFS has received some new donations from people in the community who want to help.

"It's not a huge amount of money, but it's definitely a very important representation of new interest and awareness," she said.

JFS hosts quarterly community consultations to discuss successes and challenges in terms of resettling refugees here. Partners from the city, county and other groups attend those meetings.

JFS also hosted a World Refugee Day event in June that included a discussion of the needs of refugee children in Washtenaw County.

"We had videos produced in house of some of our refugee children sharing their experiences and it was heartbreaking for us," Abramzon said of what some of the refugee children in high school have faced here.

"Honestly, I had no idea what the kids are going through in our schools today. For kids who were in hiding, who had to run away from such horrible things, to come here and be called terrorists and to go through a horrible experience, it was heartbreaking to see that, but it was an important conversation to have."

JFS has responded by partnering with schools to create welcoming groups within the schools.

"For example, when we register a child in school, if a child identifies that they're having a difficult time integrating, some of the schools have been responding by creating sort of a welcoming group," Eadeh said.

"So they select a few of the other children who are already in the school to welcome that child into the school and show them around, and make them feel comfortable and eat lunch with them."

Despite some negative experiences reported by refugee children in high school, Eadeh said she has not heard of any JFS clients expressing that community members have been hostile toward them.

"I think more often than not they're saying community members have been extremely welcoming," she said.

"We have clients who are surprised that people say hi to them on the street, and that's something very simple people can do."

Abramzon added, "We also have clients who are resilient and they don't complain, so I'm not 100 percent sure that they will run to us and say something negative. I think they appreciate what's being done for them."

Eadeh said the Ann Arbor District Library has been another great partner in welcoming refugees.

"The library actually does something extra special for us," she said. "They provide us with books in different languages, and they actually give them to us for free. We have a little station in our offices where they drop off books that children can come and take and read and take home. They've been a really great partner, and they've also hosted events for us as well."

'We really want to inspire humanity'

Welcoming America, a nonprofit organization helping communities across the country become more welcoming places for all people, including immigrants, is recognizing Sept. 16-25 as Welcoming Week.

Here in Ann Arbor, JFS has been using the week to train the next wave of volunteers who will be helping to welcome refugees here.

"For us, it's mostly just training of volunteers," Abramzon said of what's happening to recognize Welcoming Week. "We've been so swamped with doing resettlement work and just gearing up for this next surge.

"It's sort of business as usual, but we also just met with the staff person who was appointed by the county to run the effort," she said, referring to Moonson Eninsche, the county's human services policy specialist.

"We're doing what we can to support great community agencies like Jewish Family Services, which has a longtime presence here in Washtenaw County, as well as welcoming new partners to the table," said Andrea Plevek, the county's human services manager and interim director of the Office of Community and Economic Development. "And also supporting our local municipalities to understand and work closely with the nonprofit community to make sure it's a good transition for refugees coming to Washtenaw County."

Plevek noted Samaritas, Michigan's largest refugee resettlement agency, is another partner. Samaritas recently announced it is setting up an office in the Ann Arbor area to resettle refugees here.

Earlier this month, Samaritas indicated it had plans to resettle at least 12 families in the Ann Arbor area in the coming months.

Samaritas is planning to partner with JFS, which until now has been the only agency in the county contracted through the State Department to resettle refugees here, to provide smooth transitions for refugees. JFS offers a number of wrap-around services that extend beyond the initial 90-day resettlement period and expects to serve refugees resettled here by Samaritas.

"A strength of ours is we're with our clients over the mountain, through the hills and to grandmother's house we go," Hong said.

"I mean, the government is asking us for 90 days of support and we are rarely out of the picture on Day 91. It's just not how we operate."

Hong said JFS has heard from the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society that there are people in refugee camps overseas who talk about JFS of Washtenaw County.

"We can't even fathom that there's someone in Jordan in a tent speaking about us because they knew someone who had such a wonderful experience coming through us," she said. "It was so humbling to hear that."

As another way of making refugees feel welcome here, JFS is organizing a Festival of Lights benefit concert on Dec. 12 to celebrate refugees. The event will take place at Temple Beth Emeth, 2309 Packard St. in Ann Arbor

"We've asked a lot of the congregations to bring a musical group or participate musically in this concert that will be sort of a celebration of the refugee experience and a welcoming event," said Rosemary Frenza Chudnof, JFS development director. "We'll have music from different faith traditions and then probably a group musical number at the end."

There also will be an art exhibit of photography that JFS refugee clients will produce this fall, reflecting their experience.

"It's an opportunity to come together as a community again and just say that we understand that the world can be a scary place, but we really want to inspire humanity, which is part of our mission," Abramzon said.

"And it's really all about allowing people the dignity of coming to this country and having peaceful lives."

Ryan Stanton covers the city beat for The Ann Arbor News. Reach him at ryanstanton@mlive.com.