The Buffalo Hive is a nonprofit journalism organization dedicated to covering arts and culture in Buffalo and Western New York. While our coverage of the arts has been good so far, it seems like this is the time to start thinking about the many cultures that make up our region. 

So with that in mind, The Buffalo Hive is starting a new feature called “How Can We Help,” looking at ways we can all work together – across all cultures – to make Western New York a better place. 

Immigrants have been a huge factor in the city’s growth for 200 years now, and the influx of immigrants was one of the factors that stopped Buffalo’s population slide. Immigrants – many of them refugees – have helped drive a large part of whatever economic resurgence has had. So that’s why our first How Can We Help” entry is based on an interview late last year with Journey’s End Director of Outreach and Volunteers Andy Cammarata.

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By Elmer Ploetz

For anybody involved in working with refugees, anytime there’s a change in presidents there is always a big question: What will that administration’s stance be, given that the president sets the number of refugees allowed into the United States each year. 

For Andy Cammarata, that’s a big question with a new administration about to take office. 

“We don’t know what that will look like come January,” she said. “And so we’re all sort of waiting to see what happens next. In a very real way that affects a lot of our colleagues, who are waiting for family reunification of some of their loved ones, immediate family, husbands, wives, children.”

Journey’s End had its busiest fiscal year in 2024 (which ended on Sept. 30), resettling 616 refugees in the Buffalo area with a budget of over $10 million. 

Many are Rohingya refugees from Myanmar (although some of them have never been in Myanmar because they’ve been displaced for generations). There are also Syrians, Congolese, Somalians and Eritreans. 

“You can’t have a healthy economy without population, without people,” Cammarata said, “and so when you think about what kind of dollars those refugees bring with them, and the taxes that they pay and they go to work and the items that they’re buying. Everything goes into Erie County.”

Journey’s End is a faith-based community organization, but doesn’t take religion into consideration when deciding who to help.

Journey’s End has many ways you can help. Cammarata pointed out a couple of examples of volunteers taking action. 

One is Wheels for Workers, out of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Eggertsville. This group accepts donations of bicycles and rehabs them. Then West Herr donates helmets and locks for the bikes. 

“They put a stamp of approval on them, they put a bell on them and they deliver maybe 20 to 30 bikes a week to Journey’s End,” said Cammarata. “So we’re able to get bicycles in the hands of our new arrivals so that they can get to work, they can get to school, they can get to the grocery store.”

Another volunteer group is Kathy’s Happy Helpers. This group has grown to over 75 members from different faith groups, and the members set up apartments for the immigrants. 

That’s important because when a refugee is accepted into the United States and resettled, Cammarata said, they receive a one-time federal payment of $1,325. They frequently receive donated furniture, she said, but “There’s all the other things that go into an apartment, the sheets, the towels, the dishes, utensils, the pots and pans. It’s quite a bit to set up an apartment, and we’re setting up anywhere from three to five apartments per week.”

So the volunteers in these groups go in and set up the apartments with many of those necessary amenities. 

“We only will set the apartment up with a list of what we’re required to get,” Cammarata said, “which wouldn’t include a toaster oven or a microwave or a coffee maker. And so the groups do that for us. … a group will come in and lovingly prepare the apartment. They’ll scrub things from top to bottom. They will have little details for the families. So they’ll cater things to the boys, the girls, moms and dads, special treats, just really a lot of the extras.”

Finding apartments can be a challenge. The areas where immigrants used to be placed have become too expensive, in part because the immigrants strengthened the neighborhoods. 

“When I started working for Journey’s End in 2012, we were still placing people on the West Side. That is long gone,” she said. “We’ve really filled up. I’ve watched Black Rock change. I’ve watched Riverside change, and now I’m watching Broadway Fillmore really change.”

The issue is complicated, she said, by the fact that “Our folks don’t have established credit in this country, so they can’t pass a credit check. And so we don’t have access to the same types of housing that a normal, typical American does, and so we rely on our foreign-born landlords. But the prices of the apartments have really skyrocketed in the last couple years, and so it’s becoming increasingly difficult for our families to afford to live here.”

That brings up the issue of food insecurity. Journey’s End also takes donations of food; for example, St. Luke’s Mission of Mercy donated 450 bags of food in November that went straight to refugees. 

Those are examples of groups taking action. But what can individuals do? Here are a few possibilities: 

• Contribute monetarily. Journey’s End can also use contributions that they can use without restriction wherever needs arise. 
• Volunteer. Journey’s End uses volunteers for:
• Home tutoring
• Citizenship tutoring
• ESL (English as Second Language) classes
• A mobile food pantry
• The Green Shoots program on the Brewster Street Farm
• The Home Again Program (groups only, doing the kind of work Kathy’s Happy Helpers do)
• Donation and fundraising drives. 
• Doing internships
• Attend events, such as screenings in the Journey’s End  Refugee Film Festival.

Journey’s End has even more programs and ways you can help at its website. If you’re interested in volunteering, you can email volunteer@jersbuffalo.org. 

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Do you know about a group or non-profit organization that is making significant contributions to the community and should be noted in this column? Email us!