Organizations conduct clothing drive for refugees

CLARKSTON — The Heavenly Culture, World Peace, Restoration of Light (HWLP) of Georgia organization is partnering with Friends of Refugees for Education and Empowerment (FREE) to provide programming and assistance for refugee families. HWPL hosted its first clothing drive on Jan. 29, collecting more than 700 items in less than two hours.

Clarkston is temporary home to more than 60,000 refugees, and has become one of the most ethnically diverse square miles in America, hosting refugees fleeing civil war and ethnic cleansing, from Somalia, Bhutan, Liberia, Croatia, Cambodia and other nations.

FREE, an organization that aspires “to empower refugees through opportunities that provide for their well-being, education, and employment,” partnered with HWPL to organize community-building initiatives that help to restore a sense of autonomy to refugee children as they take ownership, and cooperatively engage with other families that share similar experiences.

For the first clothing drive, volunteers from HWPL organized tents and tables, at which each individual could take up to 10 items for free; a face-painting table for the kids, and volunteers to play soccer with the children. A few kids’ interest in photography was sparked as they interacted with the volunteer photographers and participated in taking photos together.

For decades, Clarkston was a small city with goat farmers making up much of its population. More than 300,000 Southeast Asian migrants entered the city in the 1970s due to the fall of Saigon, the last major event of the Vietnam War. As Congress grasped the scale of this refugee migration, it passed the Refugee Act of 1980 to standardize resettlement services for all refugees entering the country.

The U.S. then formally adopted the United Nations’ definition of a “refugee” as someone who has been forced to flee their country because of persecution, war or violence, who has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.

The transition for refugees is a complicated process through which the refugees must go through a one-year vetting process of the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees, and the United States, which takes an average of 18 months to two years. To get settled into their new lives in America, they need assistance in literacy, paperwork, sustainable living, education, and much more. Programming by groups like FREE and HWPL are partnering up to help improve the living conditions of the residents of Clarkston.

For the rest of the year, HWPL volunteers will work with FREE to provide a hygiene drive in spring, a back-to-school drive in the summer, and a food drive for the end of the year. In addition, each month, HWPL volunteers will assist in processing paperwork for scholarships, providing peace camps and activities to enrich the kids and parents to cement values of cooperation, peace-building, and individual impact.

Students or members of the community interested in volunteering their time and services can visit and contact @HWPLGeorgia on Instagram or learn more about the organization at www.hwpl.us.

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