Help US Together Support Refugee Youth Learning This Summer!

A RLMP mentor meeting with a refugee family in the fall

This year, June 13th marks a day of celebration in the United States known as National Children’s Day. This day honors children by slowing down our fast-paced schedules to focus on what’s important to us. It is a day of opportunity to spend time with and support the children in our lives. At US Together, we will be celebrating the refugee youth we serve and this year you can too by donating to our Summer Youth Program between now and June 13th!

In the Summer of 2020, US Together staff noticed the educational gaps refugee youth faced since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. All of the students we served had not been in the classroom since March of that year, and they would be going into the next school year completely remote. Thus, the Remote Learning Mentoring Program (RLMP) was created!

Melissa Mattwig, US Together’s AmeriCorps VISTA Refugee Integration Specialist and the developer of the RLMP, described that the program “was created to support refugee children in the Cleveland area who struggled with remote learning during this academic year."

 In the Remote Learning Mentoring Program, students were paired with mentors and tutors who meet with them remotely on a weekly basis to help them navigate remote learning platforms as well as complete their schoolwork. The RLMP has filled the gaps by helping students log into their remote learning platforms, and understand and complete their homework. Many of our refugee students have limited English proficiency and need extra support understanding assignments that they often do not receive at home, due to language or digital literacy barriers found in the communities we serve. You can learn more about the RLMP from Melissa on our Youtube Channel!

 Khwater Nayef, the Refugee Services Coordinator at the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, continues working with Melissa and other US Together staff to pair students with mentors throughout the year. When asked why she believes the RLMP has been essential for refugee youth during COVID, she stated:

"Experiences with online learning this year have sparked concerns that many students are falling behind academically — not only because the virtual school can’t replicate what happens in the school, but also because many students are struggling with the technology to access online classes. In many families, it will fall to older children to manage their siblings’ remote learning alongside their own, since they understand the technology, language, and expectations of schools better than their parents do. These conditions will cascade educational inequities without immediate intervention, that's why the Remote Learning Mentoring Program been important for refugee students and their families."

The Summer Youth Program is being created as an essential extension of the Remote Learning Mentoring Program and it will focus on academic support for youth and additional programming to address social, emotional, and physical needs of our students to fill the significant gaps brought on by COVID-19.  

Stay tuned over the next two months to hear from various US Together staff, volunteers and refugee youth who will be participating in the Summer Youth Program, and learn why refugee youth services are now more important than ever. If you feel inspired to support our cause and the Summer Youth Program, you can donate at the link below. Together, we can fill in the gaps that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought onto refugee youth.