Open Doors for Refugees Builds Community Through Acts of Welcome
By Ia vanOpstall, Volunteer Writer
“I’m an aggressive networker,” jokes Jason Mack, Executive Director of Open Doors for Refugees (Open Doors). “We have a good reputation in town. We punch above our weight.”
He’s not wrong. Since its inception more than ten years ago, Open Doors and their dedicated leadership and volunteers have more than earned that good reputation. Serving refugees in the greater Madison area, they provide crucial services like transportation assistance, furniture for families, and winter weather clothing during the cold months. Additionally, Open Doors provides ESL teaching, and even offers childminding so parents can take classes with Open Doors’ partner organizations.
Jason, who came on board as Open Doors' Executive Director in late 2024, describes the organization’s mission as grouped around “acts of welcome”. In his role, he’s helped develop new and sustainable support services, centered around community connections and one-on-one coaching between students and volunteers. He highlights Open Doors' ‘Community Connections’ program, coordinated by Dan Boyer, which matches refugees with volunteers with specialized skills, in order to provide support in a specific area of English language development.
In one example, Open Doors assisted a refugee from Afghanistan, who had significant experience in upper management construction, but struggled to find work since arriving in Wisconsin.
“He felt that the disconnect was in the interview process,” Jason explained.
Many refugees possess specialized skills but still face barriers when trying to re-enter those areas of expertise in countries where they don’t speak the predominant language. Through the Community Connections program, this student was able to work one-on-one with a volunteer who had specialized knowledge about the topic, having written a book on interviewing skills, to practice his English in mock interviews. He has since landed key interviews with major construction companies.
Open Doors' coaching partnership network had eight pairings in its pilot, with Wisconsin Literacy playing a key role in its execution. Thanks to a recent grant, they were able to distribute a number of laptops, as well as technology training, through the communities served by their member organizations, including Open Doors. Jason also described Wisconsin Literacy’s training materials as ‘something close to mandatory’ when helping volunteers get started in one-on-one sessions. Their ongoing partnership speaks to the success of the community relationship format that is key to Open Doors' operations- but there’s always more to do!
“It’s different every day, which is part of what I love about it,” says Jason, in response to a question about his daily schedule. He describes his time as being broken up into roughly thirds, with one dedicated to fundraising, networking and public speaking, another going to directly supporting his volunteers and team leads, with the final being used for big picture and infrastructure related tasks- stuff Jason describes as “thinking about the future”. To put it simply: He’s busy. To a quib about sharing his advice to keep a to-do list with newsletter readers, he retorts, “keep several”.
But this third part of the job, thinking about the future, is more important than ever. There’s been an unexpected upheaval in Open Doors' day-to-day operations; since 2024, the influx of refugees in Madison has slowed- and those who remain may be less likely to seek out community resources due to fear of law enforcement. This can make it more challenging than ever to obtain the skills that can help them break down barriers.
“It’s the cornerstone to a successful transition,” Jason replied to a question about the importance of continuing literacy education. English might be the most major barrier refugees face when navigating the school system, healthcare, transportation, and particularly employment, as evidenced by the needs that their students, such as the construction manager from Afghanistan, have expressed in Community Connections sessions.
“We want to work hard” is what Jason describes as one of the most common sentiments amongst Open Doors' refugee community, and they have the determination to back it up. “It’s the hardest thing we ask adults to do,” Jason says about learning a second language, joking that he did “okay, relatively” in college Spanish, but bombed attempts at learning Japanese and Greek.
Nowadays, it seems we are all consumed by the ever-roving scope of injustices in our world, with less and less energy to devote to each item on that list. Open Doors' mission is to make sure refugees don’t slip through the cracks. Literacy continues to be a major part of this story- teaching crucial skills to dedicated learners to make sure no one is invisible in healthcare, education, transportation or employment systems.
Jason is available to speak about these issues more broadly, in addition to discussing Open Doors' mission and the resources they provide. You can contact him at jason@odfr.org. If you are interested in volunteering for Open Doors, please reach out to them at their dedicated volunteering email, volunteers@odfr.org.
