By Matt Wadhewa and Emma Yaaka
The first thing Emma Yaaka points out in his new office is a piece of wall art from the welcome package he received when he arrived in the United States. It hangs in a Rogers Park space Emma painted and furnished himself.
Emma came to Chicago as a refugee from Uganda in July 2017, at age 25, and had to learn a new country all at once: work, culture, language, legal paperwork, public benefits, and a support system built from scratch. It taught him that integration takes more than enrollment in programs. It takes relationships, trust, patience, and people who show up when someone needs them most.
Today, Emma is the Refugee Congress Delegate for Illinois, a former advisor of the U.S. Refugee Advisory Board (USRAB), and the founder of the U.S. Refugee Integration Organization (URIO).
Not a job, a neighborhood
URIO runs three referral-based programs: Echo Point Alliance, supporting LGBTQI+ refugees and immigrants; Community Social Support, covering emergency housing, food, jobs, and legal referrals; and Creation, Technology and Innovation, which builds careers and leadership through storytelling, media, and technology.
In the past six months, URIO has received household items from community volunteers and donors and distributed more than 130 household items to refugees and immigrants, helped keep seven families fed, and found volunteer hosts for four people needing additional support because of their immigration status or health. Emma has personally used his own car to help teach five people to drive, including three refugees, an asylum seeker, and the U.S.-born daughter of immigrants, all now licensed.
Emma spent years as a resettlement case manager, supervisor, and partnership developer and he speaks with respect about colleagues who work tirelessly under heavy caseloads. But he noticed that while offices keep hours, crises do not. His own hardest moments as a newcomer were "after five and on weekends."
"You can't call anyone apart from 911, where most refugees are scared of calling 911 or 311," he said.
Refugees working full time can't make weekday appointments, and new arrivals sometimes land at midnight, making it a challenge for already constrained agencies to support. So URIO is open evenings, weekends, and holidays. It isn't meant to replace resettlement agencies, but to fill the gaps between formal services and everyday life.
On a recent drive home late one evening, Emma saw police questioning a man at a train station. He recognized a URIO client who spoke little English and was waiting for a ride to his overnight airport shift. "I know him because it's just in my area," Emma said. He pulled over and explained the situation to the officers. An office closed for the night could not have helped. A neighbor could.
Success means something different
Funding, Emma notes, tends to follow case enrollment.
"The bigger the number, the more the funds, the more the attention." In other words, he said, "We serve numbers. We don't serve people."
For Emma, help works when people stop being cases and instead become fully contributing members of their community.
He shared the example of a 25-year-old who lost his ID, social security card, and work permit on a train. He cycled through appointments for six months while sleeping at Midway Airport. Through his work with URIO, Emma sat with him for two hours, found a partner to cover the $520 replacement fee, wrote him a recommendation to demonstrate his income situation that would qualify him for a pro-bono fee waiver, and paid for his passport photos. URIO has since helped him work with a legal team to replace his work permit, and brings him food while he waits.
Closing cases for Emma is a win that, while perhaps limiting URIO’s access to funding, improves his community and empowers people to contribute.
Running on community
Even though URIO has no steady funding stream, there are ways the organization receives necessary, immediate support. The Hakafa Faith Community helps cover emergency food and transportation needs while online donations, Emma's earnings from photography and videography outside URIO, and small Refugee Congress grants for projects like civic engagement keep the rest going. Volunteers and referrals to partner agencies do most of the work.
When a family of five with one income and a baby on the way lost their food assistance, URIO connected them to food partners and gave them 12 household items to support, from kids' mattresses to a fan for a hot apartment. Emma notes there are more than 20 families still waiting for similar help.
The testament to URIO’s impact is that many of the organization’s volunteers were once its clients. For Emma, that is the clearest sign of integration: someone who once needed help becomes someone others can depend on.
"They have paid me back in full"
Emma credits Refugee Congress with much of what made URIO possible.
"If I was a funder, I would fund the Refugee Congress for the rest of my life," he said. The refugee-led organization provided him public speaking training, connections to the small grants that helped build URIO, and introductions to elected officials he never expected to meet otherwise.
When a client moves out of state, Emma calls that state's Refugee Congress Delegate, and Delegates call him when someone is headed to Chicago. "When we meet," he said, "we are brothers and sisters."
Now Emma is passing that on through a new URIO leadership program that prepares refugees to become advocates, mentors, and organizers. "I don't want to be the only person doing this work," he said. "We want to have more Emmas."
