Science teacher raises funds for Afghan families

Arianna Peper
Junior Editor/Business Manager

According to the whitehouse.gov, President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Jan. 20, to suspend the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP).

This program was introduced in 1980 when Congress passed the Refugee Act, and this program helps refugees resettle in America. These individuals in the program are eligible for U.S. government funded assistance; however, with Trump’s new executive order, the funding for USRAP is being paused, resulting in refugees losing the aid they needed in order to set up in the U.S.

As this issue progresses across the nation and court cases challenge the executive order, efforts to aid those in need through different acts of service and funding have increased.

Webster Groves science teacher Elizabeth Hobbs is one of those individuals and considers herself a “social justice advocate.”

On Saturday, March 1, Hobbs organized a Chili Bowl event that took place from 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. at Eden Theological Seminary Campus. The event was organized in order to fundraise for Welcome Neighbor, which is a community group that helps refugees and immigrants in the St. Louis area. The funding was specifically going toward two Afghan refugee families that recently came to the United States, that Hobbs had known.

Hobbs said, “I’ve been tutoring ESL with another Afghan family for three years. I’ve been working with the mom, and her husband’s cousin came in the week of President Trump’s inauguration, so a lot of the aid they were expecting was either frozen or canceled. This meant they were living with their relatives until they could get situated with what the aid was going to look like or if there was going to be any.”

The chili bowl event had around 200 people eat in and 50 to 70 people who went through the drive-through. With 72 volunteers for the event, the group was able to raise over $3,000 in cash.

Sophomore Lucy Salvala volunteered to prepare and hand out food.

Salvala said, “It’s fun to do it with your friends and help local people in the community.”

On Monday, March 3, Hobbs gave the family representatives the money they made from the event, and she said, “It was a big relief for those families to be able to buy groceries, make the mortgage and still have money so that they could potentially have a security deposit for their apartment.”

As of right now, the next steps with the funding of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program are still being determined as multiple lawsuits have been filed challenging the Trump Administration’s actions.

Arianna Peper–Junior Editor/Business Manager This will be  Arianna Peper’s second year on ECHO staff. She made several contributions while taking journalism class her freshman year.