On June 17, charity organization World Relief will celebrate “Sea-Tri-Kan,” a 5-day, 400 mile bike ride across the state of Washington. The ride starts in Seattle, heads southeast to the Tri-Cities, and ends in Spokane.
The event will have 11 riders, whom are raising an average of $2,500 each. Additionally, through the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Matching Grant Program, another two dollars is donated for every dollar raised.
The event is raising funds for refugees in Washington, in celebration of World Refugee Day on June 20. The Matching Grant Program is specifically designed to help employ refugees, with the goal of allowing them to be self-sufficient in 6 months. It’s incredibly effective too, with a 97 percent success rate.
These refugees have been forced to flee their homes due to persecution for a variety of reasons, including race, religion or political views.
Angie Funnel, ministry development specialist at World Relief Spokane, said that local refugees will be directly helped from the donations raised.
“They arrive to Washington State from all over the world with great hopes for finding a new home in safety. 100 percent of Sea-Tri-Kan proceeds will be matched 2:1 and used to help refugee families,” she said.
World Relief is an international Christian charity that seeks to help the most vulnerable, including victims of poverty, disease, hunger, war, disasters and persecution. Community based, they seek to work with churches around the world to improve local communities.
In the U.S., World Relief specializes in allowing refugees to become accustomed to their new homes and communities. They are contracted by the government to help resettle refugees. Every year, they resettle about 10 percent of the roughly 50,000-70,000 new refugees, most of whom have spent years stuck in refugee camps all over the world.
World Relief gets help from the federal government, but they also rely upon donations and fundraising events such as Sea-Tri-Kan to continue to provide essential services to refugees.
Refugees need World Relief to help get a leg up in a new country. Refugees are placed in the Reception & Placement Program, designed to provide basic needs for the first few months of their move. They are given important items such as household goods, toiletries, basic furnishings, cleaning supplies and more. World Relief Spokane also sponsors programs that teach ESL classes, assist with transportation and jobs, and much more.
The primary goal is to give refugees the necessary tools and opportunities to become completely self-sufficient, active members of the Spokane community.
World Relief does essential work all over Washington for some of the disadvantaged in our area. To learn more, visit its website at http://worldreliefspokane.org/. If you want to donate money, time, or household items to World Relief Spokane, follow the link and click on “donate”.
To help support a rider in the Sea-Tri-Kan event, go to https://worldrelief.org/STK/Give
A very exciting and worthy endeavor. My only concern is that there be much clarification about the difference of our caring for refugees, therefore often limiting our caring to rescuing them this time, and the need for us to seek justice for them and ending the economic and political systems that cause the problem in the first place. The New Kingdom that Jesus seemed to talk about eliminated the injustice.
Wish I were healthy enough to join it.