We started our organization with three refugee families. Looking back, we can see how the Road of Hope family has grown, either through VluchtelingenWerk (Dutch Council for Refugees) or by word of mouth. So many new members, with different stories and backgrounds.
In the beginning of Road of Hope, visitations were a crucial factor in helping us to recognize refugees’ frustration when trying to learn the Dutch language. The relationship between everyone involved in Road of Hope also became stronger and deeper, allowing us to effectively help the participants.
In these five years, the Road of Hope community has become well connected and is still growing. From 2016 to now, we were able to consolidate four permanent programs: Visitation, Dutch classes, Labour market integration and Breath of Hope. Even during the Covid-19 pandemic, our projects kept running.
Investing in Relationships
Despite the lockdown and pandemic, we kept Visiting but in a different way: everything became online. Despite being physically distant, our relationship with our participants became stronger. We are already looking forward to all the teas, coffees, falafels and hummus that we will share again!
The first step for integration
Our Dutch Classes have been online for the past months. Over our five year history, we have been able to help so many refugees who in turn have passed their inburgering exams, due to our classes. We have always provided all the necessary materials, alongside our wonderful volunteers, ensuring that lessons are always free of charge for every refugee. We are excited to get back to face-to-face Dutch classes.
Labor Marketing Integration
In 2016 and 2017, we had two cycles of our Labour market integration pilot project and this year, we are helping seven refugees to enter the labour market. Keep your eyes peeled for a brand new initiative coming out soon!
Empowering Women
Since 2019, within Breath of Hope we have held dozens of weekly reflection groups for almost fifty women and several workshops for almost one hundred women. Our last workshop was about Digital Marketing to help refugee women to grow their own business and the next one, Art Therapy, will focus on their emotional health.
So many reasons to be thankful!
As a recently established organization, we face many challenges in order to obtain financial support, network, and recruit volunteers to lead our activities. However, despite these challenges, we have so many reasons to be thankful. We have got two locations in which to start our new pilot projects, we have passionate volunteers, and, because we believe in the impact that can be produced by our work even with low cost projects, we keep moving forward and working full-time for refugees’ integration.
Five years later, we celebrate Road of Hope’s establishment in June 2016 and the work we do to create a safe community for so many refugees in Amsterdam! We are only able to do this through the hard work of our great partners and team! We look forward to the next five years, to all the new people who will become part of the Road of Hope family, to the new projects we are starting to dream and design, and to every refugee story of integration into the Dutch society!
Do you also want to impact refugee lives? Walk alongside us on this road of hope!
Thank you for your support! Without the support of others we wouldn’t grow and impact newcomers’ lives!