Drive around Brattleboro and surrounding towns and you’ll see “Help Wanted” signs everywhere. Many have been in place for months. Electricians and carpenters with big and small businesses can’t find help. Signs outside C&S Grocers at the north end of town display huge help-wanted signs with significant incentives. One organization in town that is working to help solve the problem, while solving others, is The Ethiopian Community Development Council (ECDC). This organization was initially set up to help Ethiopian refugees a few years back, but it is now more broadly-based. Their work is, in part, to find help for the businesses displaying those Help Wanted signs outside while helping settle refugees.
Abdul Wahid Rizwanzai is right at the heart of this matter. He moved to Brattleboro in May, 2022 to help with the successful integration and settlement of refugees who are arriving into the welcoming community of Brattleboro. Here a working organization is established and has been for four years or so with offices and several employees and a wide-ranging group of volunteers. This organization has overseen a million-dollar investment in the local economy and has helped solve the problem of lack of employees in any number of businesses in SE Vermont and further afield.
Abdul was born in Peshawar, Pakistan in 1994. His parents were originally from Kabul in Afghanistan but had to flee to Pakistan upon the Russian invasion in 1982. (The family eventually returned home.) In 2015 Abdul graduated with a law degree from the International Islamic University in Islamabad and is working toward an advanced law degree. (All education in Pakistan is in English.)
From 2015-2018 he joined an international law firm in Afghanistan as an associate lawyer and in 2019 began working in the Ministry of Finance in Kabul. He became a senior legal advisor within the government in Kabul representing the government in meetings with The World Bank and other crucial stakeholders.
On August 12, 2021, the day Kabul fell to the Taliban, Abdul had a choice to make. He could attempt to join the 90,000 people who managed to flee from the airport in Kabul with a handbag (if that) – in scenes we all witnessed on the internet and television - or to stay. He decided to stay with his family, in large part because he did not want to arrive wherever he would end up as a non-documented refugee.
“I applied to the US for asylum and four months later it was granted. I left my family behind in Afghanistan: my parents, my eldest brother – a teacher and high school principal in Afghanistan, my two other brothers both in university, a married sister and my youngest sister in school – though no longer allowed to attend. I flew to Quatar. Three months later my application to the US for asylum was granted. I departed with temporary travel documents for Kennedy Airport New York City in May, 2022. I arrived as a refugee and went directly to SIT in Brattleboro. I have not seen any of my family since, though I write to them monthly.”
He did his best to adjust to this very new life, as all refugees do. He learned how to drive a car thanks to a friend in Hinsdale. He got a license and car, and now shares an apartment in Brattleboro with a fellow refugee.
He works full-time for ECDC with individual refugees who arrive in Brattleboro through the National Resettlement Agency that was set up in 1982. He helps settle refugees: with learning English through the Multi-cultural Center on Birge Street as well as signing them up with teachers at SIT as Vermont Adult Learning programs.
Abdul does his best to find them housing – THE biggest and thorniest problem - and then begins the process of finding them work - and a car. Abdul’s goal is to “work with clients toward a successful integration into the US. Already, some are now beginning to migrate to other parts of the country. We also operate in Bennington and Wilmington, helping not only the refugees but also their employers from the offices of the Ethiopian Community Development Council here in Brattleboro.
“Local employers can also work with me to find appropriate employees. I can screen potential employees for their skills and abilities. They can call me at 603-439-1163.”
Abdul emphasized what a welcoming community Brattleboro and SE Vermont have proven to be. “We feel welcome. We have noticed no push-back. Vermont welcomes and supports this effort and it is one that has stimulated economic growth. There are 180 refugees now working in the area: Against The Grain, C and S Grocers, Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, Vermont Hardwood, Commonwealth Dairy, the BUHS cafeteria, Hannafords, Brattleboro Savings and Loan, as office workers, mechanics and as grocery handlers at C&S – “two working in the freezer area.”
And as Whit Wheeler from Dummerston, who helps support settling refugees, told me, “If you want a sense of community and diversity you will not get more anywhere than you get in Brattleboro. We have around 200 refugees here and they’re settled in and contributing. When I ask refugees what it’s like for them in America, they invariably say, ‘I feel safe.’ ”)
Abdul said “most of us send anywhere from $500-$1,000 home to our families in Afghanistan or elsewhere. In many cases, we are the sole earners in our families.”
And every moment for a refugee is valuable. Abdul told this writer, “At night, after working a ten-hour day, I have dinner – and I am learning to enjoy Chinese, Italian, Indian, Jamaican food too – I turn to my studies toward a degree in immigration law. I study on-line through The University of Pennsylvania at Villanova. I, we, feel driven to take advantage of every moment. How can I sleep?”
This is one of a series of some 30 profiles of working people from southern Vermont and adjacent New Hampshire that I wrote and then published in the Brattleboro Reformer newspaper every Friday from Jan 1 - May 30. Do the same with your local newspaper.