December 21, 2021 Dan Friedman When HIAS was founded in the late 1800s, it aimed to organize and systematize piecemeal efforts to welcome Jews fleeing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. Some 140 years later, HIAS is a global humanitarian organization, working in 16 countries but is still helping to…

December 14, 2021 Sharon Samber, HIAS.org The end of the year is a good time for taking stock of things. This week HIAS will do just that as it participates in an event designed to monitor the international response to refugee issues. The High Level Officials Meeting is part of…

December 6, 2021 Sharon Samber, HIAS.org (Andreas Solaro / AFP via Getty Images) Pope Francis returned to the island of Lesvos, Greece on Sunday, five years after first seeing the plight of migrants there, only to find that not much had changed. The pope denounced Europe for an “indifference that…

December 2, 2021 Ayelet Parness, HIAS.org Abdul, an evacuee from Afghanistan, describes his family’s experience fleeing Afghanistan following the fall of Kabul and resettling in California with the help of Apartment List’s Home Bridge program. As the Taliban closed in on Kabul and Abdul and his family awaited safe passage…

November 25, 2021 Robyn Yaker, Technical Director for Gender and GBV (Glenna Gordon) HIAS works with communities across the globe every day to prevent gender-based violence (GBV). Preventing GBV is a collective responsibility and HIAS programs reflect that everybody — every individual, every organization — has a role to play. …

November 24, 2021 Ilan Cohn, HIAS Europe Director (Sefa Karacan/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images) The current situation along the Belarus-Poland border has left thousands stranded in limbo between squabbling governments. …

November 24, 2021 Dan Friedman Two young Afghan boys, recently resettled with their families in Philadelphia, sing the ABC song they learned in a newcomer English class during HIAS Pennsylvania’s Thankful Together program, November 21, 2021. After the rushed evacuation of Afghanistan at the end of the summer, thousands of…

November 17, 2021 Sharon Samber, HIAS.org (Barbara Davidson /AFP via Getty Images) The Afghan refugee crisis has hastened a change in refugee resettlement in the United States. Last month the Biden Administration announced a new program that allows groups of private citizens to sponsor Afghan evacuees during the initial resettlement…

November 9, 2021 Dan Friedman (Nicole Belanger/ Veritas) The 54,000 Afghans stuck on eight U.S. Army bases have just sailed into a perfect storm. Working with HIAS, partners from America’s private sector may be the ones helping to build the first bridge across this troubled water. After a traumatic evacuation…