The CC Refugee Alliance (CCRA) provides opportunities for students, faculty, and staff to help support local refugees and asylum seekers in Colorado Springs, as well as participate in advocacy campaigns to support immigrants across the country.
The CCRA partners with Lutheran Family Services (LFS) to connect campus community members with opportunities to support local refugees. Through LFS, CCRA members train students to host English as a Second Language (ESL) tutoring sessions for refugees trying to learn English.
The club provides students with long-term programs to support refugees, as well as short-term volunteer opportunities. At least twice a year, the club makes welcome baskets and hygiene baskets to give to local refugees. Depending on the needs of LFS and the capacity of club members, the club offers other opportunities, such as helping refugees set up apartments and providing cultural mentorship. The club also hosts workshops and events on immigration-related issues and advocacy, and supports other community movements, including the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition and Colorado Springs Sanctuary Coalition.
“I joined CC Refugee Alliance because I’m passionate about the equitable treatment of refugees,” says co-chair Italia Quintana ’25, a Romance Languages major and Political Science and REMS minor. “I strongly believe that the narratives surrounding refugees are often inhumane and harmful and countering those narratives is essential to supporting refugee communities.”
One of Quintana’s favorite club memories is from last semester, when they made welcome baskets to make it easier for refugees to adjust to their new housing.
“I believe that the connection between CC and the CS refugee community is essential as migrant issues are personal to many of us, but affect all of us,” says Quintana. “For those who care about social justice, the importance of refugee collaboration is overt considering the harm that anti-refugee ideologies cause. For those who are less involved with social justice and activism, I believe our club offers human-to-human interactions that foster collaborative, compassionate, and understanding relationships with our community.”
A major part and primary focus of CCRA is connecting with organizations that support refugees.
“Even when we engage in activism campaigns, it is based on what community members are doing,” says co-chair Peniel Owusu-Ansah ’24, a Political Science and Sociology major. “This ensures the work we do is sustainable and continues even when students leave CC. Our goal is to connect the CC community with the Colorado Springs community in a meaningful way. In many cases, both refugees and CC students are new to Colorado Springs, and it is great to connect these individuals so they can support each other while they are all getting acclimated to their new community. These are meant to be long-lasting relationships.”
Owusu-Ansah joined CCRA because she and her family are immigrants. “Moving to the U.S., was a difficult transition for me, and I could not have done it without the support of my family and different community members,” she says. “I became a part of CCRA because I want to create a community for new immigrants like the one that supported and welcomed me when I arrived.”
One of Owusu-Ansah’s favorite moments in CCRA was their info session at the beginning of this academic year, which was attended by over 30 CC students, faculty, and staff, all eager to learn ways they could support the immigrant community. She also enjoyed hearing students who serve as cultural mentors with LFS talk about how they connected with refugee families.
Co-chair Maya Elias ’25 joined CCRA so she could learn more about the needs of the refugee population and get involved in advocacy for refugees within Colorado Springs.
“Colorado communities consist of thousands of refugees from all over the world,” Elias says. “While refugees add to Colorado communities and are expected to do the same tasks of day-to-day life, the cultural barriers and differences that refugees experience along with the trauma many have faced in their home countries or migration journeys make it difficult to acclimate to life in these communities. The CC Refugee Alliance works with local community organizations from the springs as well as across Colorado to help support these members of our communities and works to educate our members about issues many refugees face.”
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