NBC 7’s Amber Frias spoke to a San Diego family getting ready to sponsor a refugee family.
Resettlement agencies typically handle all of the logistics to help refugees find safe haven in the U.S., but now a new program is making it easier for ordinary people to help.
It's called Welcome Corps, and it's giving San Diego families the tools to sponsor refugee families and help them to a soft landing in a foreign country.
When Rancho Peñasquitos resident Jennifer Barkley first heard about Welcome Corps she knew she wanted to sign up. She also wanted to spread the word.
“This is our initial Facebook post to the Rolling Hills community to put out feelers and see if anyone else was interested in getting involved in the Welcome Corp program," Barkley said, showing off her phone.
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It wasn’t long before she was flooded with responses.
Megan Gross was one of them.
"It felt really powerful to actually be an agent of change and that we could actually do something," she said.
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The Biden administration announced Welcome Corps in January. It allows U.S. Citizens to directly sponsor refugees resettling from all over the world.
But there are a few steps. First, it requires groups of at least five people over the age 18 who live near each other.
Then you must complete a background check, training and create a welcome plan that includes housing, health services and documentation. Lastly, sponsors must raise $2,300 per refugee to help support their first three months in the county.
"The department wants you to have at least 60% of the funds for the refugee family in order to move forward and then they process your application," Gross said.
The Rolling Hills Welcome Corps group is made up of six sponsors. None have ever worked with refugees, but all felt like the program was a great way to help.
"We watch the news, we read the news and so much seems outside of our scope and out of our interest, and this is a program that's designed for community members to take action and do something," Gross said.
The group hopes to come up with at least $20,000 to sponsor a family of six. So far they’ve raised $14,000. They say they've been told the family will most likely come from sub-Saharan Africa.
"I think this is a boost that a lot of us need to see how much kindness there is in the world and to see some good news once in a while," Barkley said.
Sponsors have to commit to 90 days of providing support to their refugee families.
