During the confinement and the summer, JRS France - the Jesuit Refugee Service - was, against all expectations, very active. Volunteers and host families joined the association's teams, expanding the solidarity network in favour of asylum seekers and refugees.

Of the seven programmes with which JRS France reaches asylum seekers and refugees, six continued their activities during the period of confinement. This was unexpected and unhoped-for!

JRS Welcome, thanks to the dynamism of the coordination teams and the support of the national team, continued to welcome around 150 people. Welcoming during the period of confinement: what a symbol!

JRS Youth launched online workshops. On the programme: a daily challenge to maintain the link or create new ones, launching around a hundred French conversation pairs. The French language school, via WhatsApp and Skype, maintained courses and personal support to learn the language, so much so that around forty students managed to apply for the Diplôme d'Etudes en Langue Française.

Summer at JRS

We have decided to remain open throughout the summer to ensure continuity of accompaniment and to avoid a forced break for asylum seekers and refugees.

The organization of this period is, in part, the orchestration of the unpredictable. Who could have predicted that twenty or so volunteers would come to offer us their support for French conversations and workshops in the service of encounter and reciprocity? Who could have predicted how many asylum seekers and refugees would move to get out of the isolation and social exclusion imposed by their status as much as by the health risk? Who could have imagined that new host families would be knocking at our door to welcome just after confinement?

In a word, this exceptional period reminds us of the grace of everyday life. We continue with it to accompany, serve and defend the forcibly displaced persons.

Testimony of Dominique, volunteer for JRS France

“Through JRS France, an association located near the coworking area where I work, I met a young refugee from Afghanistan. During the confinement this friend lost his home and there was nothing I could do to help. At the suggestion of a member of JRS we agreed to meet on Zoom once a day to learn French. This helped us to stay in touch, which was one way of simply being there for him.

His story confronted me with the injustice of not having a place in society to live and work as a young refugee. However it is a source of hope to me that even if this situation was beyond my ability to act, our friendship was an isle of humanization.”

Antoine Paumard sj, Director of JRS France

https://www.jrsfrance.org/
The complete testimony of Dominique