Reporting
Welcome Connect, a platform to help request asylum in the United States
The Welcome Connect platform, connecting American families ready to welcome refugees and asylum seekers, was presented at the South by Southwest festival in Austin.
The site was launched in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, when many Ukrainians sought refuge in other countries, but families were unable to easily offer their welcome.
Host father Bryce Luchterhand (left) with Welcome.US leader Nazanin Ash and ServiceNow manager Jim Lesser at the 2024 South by SouthWest festival in Austin.
© Thomas Harms / RFI
By: Thomas Harms Follow
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From our special correspondent in Austin,
Maxine and Bryce continue a 121-year family tradition on their farm in Wisconsin.
Despite the snow and wind, they raise livestock, a small farmyard, beehives, and they harvest maple syrup.
Since January 30, 2023, they have hosted a family from the Ukrainian city of Lviv.
More than 8 million Ukrainians fled their country after the start of Russian military operations.
Nazanin Ash remembers: “
We saw a lot of messages on Facebook from people saying they wanted to host Ukrainians, but they didn't know how to do it.
» Nazanin Ash had just been appointed a few months earlier to head Welcome.US, an organization that was created when the United States evacuated 100,000 refugees from Afghanistan at the end of summer 2021.
Welcome.US coordinates the public sector
, private sector and NGOs to provide material, financial and legal assistance to Afghan refugees.
In the board of directors, there are no less than three presidential couples, including the Bush couple, the Clinton couple and the Obama couple.
Nazanin Ash leverages her networks, and works with ServiceNow, whose expertise is in building IT systems and platforms.
The teams are working hard, weekends included.
In six weeks, they put the Welcome Connect platform
online
, a site that connects Ukrainian refugees with Americans who wish to accommodate them.
“
We saw the war in Ukraine starting on TV
,” remembers Maxine Luchterhand, “
and my husband told me: we have to do something
.
» Bryce Luchterhand continues: “
We have a second empty house on our land, the house where I grew up.
My mother who lived there had died a year earlier, I thought we could accommodate someone there!
» He does some research on the internet and ends up on the Welcome Connect site.
“
The photos of the little ones playing in front of the floats convinced us
”
“
We were reassured by the ease, by the intuitiveness of the site, and by all the help it provides us with the administrative process
,” says the couple in their seventies.
They entered their search criteria and came across the profile of Mykola and Olesia Hnatiuk, with their children Roman and Dmytro.
“
It was the photos of the little ones playing in front of the floats that convinced us.
We have grandchildren the same age as them
,” explains Bryce, with a tear in his eye when he talks about it.
For their part, since the invasion of their country, Mykola and Olesia worked for an insurance company, and they were reluctant to leave.
“
If you leave, what are we fighting for?
“, their loved ones told them.
So they stayed.
Until the day Dmytro's brother went to the front and was reported missing.
“
In
Lviv, we were just surviving, so we left.
It’s difficult to be far away, but we wanted to save the lives of our children
,” says Olesia, in
the documentary
One good reason
.
So, they published their profile on Welcome Connect.
In total, more than 200,000 Americans sponsored Ukrainians, mostly family members or friends, but 3,000 did like Bryce and Maxine and decided to sponsor strangers.
Sponsoring
means first of all providing accommodation – they could take advantage of this empty house – but also providing for the material needs of the refugees
.
A surge of solidarity in a village called Unity
“
We didn’t think so, but the neighbors and the village helped us very quickly.
From the first days, one brought a meal, the other offered to give them one of his cars.
We took the steps, but deep down, the community also wanted to help
,” explains the couple.
It's a detail, but the village is called Unity (unity, in French).
Once checks by American authorities have been completed, refugees have three months to purchase their plane tickets and arrive in the United States.
Mykola and Olesia took this time to put their affairs in order before leaving for a trip whose return is still uncertain.
They currently have humanitarian refugee status for two years,
a stay that they hope is temporary
, depending on the security situation at home.
In Wisconsin, they moved from urban life - in Ukraine's sixth city - to life on a farm 5 miles from the nearest village.
She got a job in the maintenance of a small delicatessen company, she returned to her studies to validate her experience and improve her English.
The Luchterhands have gained neighbors, friends and new grandchildren who knock on their door to show them their drawings made at school.
In just over two years, 3.5 million people have visited the Welcome.US site, and 500,000 have been sponsored to come to the United States.
Today, Welcome Connect has a network of host families in 50 U.S. states, in more than 11,000 locations.
Nearly 16,000 Ukrainians are still waiting for sponsorships.
But the platform is no longer reserved for Ukrainians: it is now open to asylum seekers from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti.
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