US tries 'sponsor circles' to speed Afghan refugee resettlement

In response to an influx of refugees who arrived in the United States after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the U.S. government is trying something new to get them settled as quickly as possible: a form of community sponsorship.

The new model, called “sponsor circles,” allows community groups to collectively raise funds and support the resettlement of a refugee individual or family. Neighbors, places of worship, or any other group can come together to form a sponsor circle. They are then responsible for supporting Afghan refugees in finding housing, meeting basic needs, seeking employment and education, and navigating their new communities.

In the U.S., refugee resettlement has traditionally been handled by nine agencies that partner with the government. But this infrastructure faced severe funding cuts during former President Donald Trump’s administration, resulting in downsizings and closures of local offices throughout the country. That strained system has struggled to rapidly resettle the tens of thousands of refugees who were evacuated from Afghanistan and have been living on military bases since their arrival in the U.S.

The Taliban takeover in August resulted in a “massive influx of displaced people who needed welcome and support, and the infrastructure decimated by the previous administration is working around the clock,” said Danielle Grigsby, the director of external affairs and a co-founder at the U.S.-based Community Sponsorship Hub, which launched last year and is helping organize the Sponsor Circle Program.

At the same time, Grigsby said, “Communities were saying, ‘Give us something to do,’” and that led to the creation of the program.

It launched in October, with State Department approval. While it is the first such program in decades in the U.S., it draws on lessons of private sponsorship in other countries, including Canada. It operates alongside the official U.S. government resettlement program for Afghans displaced in August, called the Afghan Placement and Assistance Program.

About 30 sponsor circles have been certified so far, with organizations that work on military bases making matches for them, Grigsby said. More than 100 additional ones are in the process of coming online, she added.

Refugee support organization HIAS is one of the umbrella agencies working to develop sponsor circles, which it calls “welcome circles,” and provide them with support. It is also one of the nine official U.S. resettlement agencies.

Founded by Jews, HIAS is primarily using its connections to hundreds of synagogues across the country — it works closely with about 800 — to help mobilize groups to support refugees, said Merrill Zack, the organization’s vice president of community engagement.

While members of the Jewish community assisted in the mass resettlement of Jews from the Soviet Union from the 1970s into the 1990s, most efforts to support refugees at synagogues since then have been more piecemeal, Zack said.

“We knew they could assist in this emergency moment,” she said, adding that her organization is also using interfaith coalitions to cultivate sponsor circles and recruit members for them.

HIAS is helping sponsor circles through the application process and the development of in-depth welcome plans, while also creating additional resources to support them at different stages in the resettlement process. The organization already has two liaisons for sponsor circles and will likely hire one more, tasked with answering their questions and providing support, Zack said.

The national Sponsor Circle Program requires that all members undergo background checks and that each group raise a minimum of $2,275 per person they resettle, equivalent to what the U.S. government allocates to refugee agencies for the resettlement of one individual. Those funds go toward housing, cash assistance, and other needs.

In addition to meeting that minimum, HIAS expects its sponsor circles to create budgets based on the cost of living for low-income people in their cities and then raise sufficient funds to cover those expenses for the refugees they support. Each sponsor circle’s welcome plan must address housing, finances, mental health, cultural orientation, education, and employment.

The Sponsor Circle Program requires a minimum commitment of three months for supporting the refugees, while HIAS requires six months. As an umbrella organization, HIAS has been encouraged to “tailor this and build up from minimums as desired,” Zack said.

Afghans are paired with sponsor circles in two primary ways. In addition to matches made by organizations on military bases, which consider the family size that sponsors say they can support, a group of friends or family members can ask to support particular refugee individuals or families. In both situations, the refugees are asked if they want to opt in.

The program’s potential benefits will be clearer in time, Grigsby said, but one is that Afghan refugees with family or other connections may be more likely to resettle in their area. This might reduce refugee out-migration, which can create challenges around access to services.

While the Sponsor Circle Program is only for refugees currently housed on military bases in the U.S., a broader effort is underway to build out a private refugee sponsorship program that is permanent, Grigsby said.

More than a dozen countries have some form of private sponsorship, which the U.S. can learn from and tailor to its own context, she said. Meanwhile, the Sponsor Circle Program has been built with robust monitoring and evaluation so that organizers can get real-time feedback and continue to generate best practices, Grigsby added.

Devex, with support from our partner GHR Foundation, is exploring the intersection between faith and development. Visit the Focus on: Faith and Development page for more. Disclaimer: The views in this article do not necessarily represent the views of GHR Foundation.