Over the past 30 years, the Roanoke area has experienced a dramatic influx of international populations linked to the resettlement of over 4,000 political refugees who have been approved by the U.S. department of State to come to this country. Refugee and Immigration Services appoints caseworkers to help these families for one year, but numerous factors including illiteracy, culture, family composition and post-traumatic stress make a full transition in only a single year extremely difficult. With only one year of support, many refugees retreat into poverty because they are not receiving the additional help they need. As the city of Roanoke has a limited capacity to assist the refugees, Virginia Tech students (through the Virginia Tech Center for Student Engagement and Community Partnerships) have taken initiative to counter the resource strain. Virginia Tech students provide primarily African refugee children and their families with increased opportunity to succeed in America through emotional, technical, social and educational programs. These programs include with activities like after-school homework help for children, support in finding social services for adults, English as a Second Language classes and citizenship classes. These projects were first established in the Pilot Street Project, a housing development through the Roanoke Housing Authority, and have been transferred to other housing developments.

The overall vision/broad goal of the Global Neighbors at Pilot Street is to build capacity and reduce poverty in the African Refugee community of Roanoke City, Virginia. We aim to do this in three ways. First, we will effectively implement educational and other programs for over 100 child refugees we are currently serving. Second, we will expand our volunteer base at the VT Center for Student Engagement and Community Partnerships from 60 volunteers a semester to 80 volunteers a semester in order to have the capacity to meet the needs of dozens more refugees scheduled to be resettled in Roanoke in the coming months. Lastly, we will continue to form friendships and cross-cultural bonds between the refugees and the Virginia Tech student volunteers. First, we will increase the effectiveness of our current programs through volunteer initiatives such as my student booklet project. Then, we will recruit more volunteers by promoting our program at club fairs and conferences on campus. Lastly, we will form cross-cultural bonds through friendship and servant leadership when working with the refugees. As a Global Neighbors leader in the homework help portion of Pilot Street, my personal goal is to increase the effectiveness of our after school homework help sessions by engaging students and, in turn, aiding more refugee children in succeeding academically. I have spent three years working with the refugee children and I feel like they are my younger siblings. I want nothing more than to build capacity in this young disadvantaged generation and help them succeed.

My role in this organization pertains to the establishment of the homework help sessions three years ago at the Virginia Tech Center for Student Engagement and Community Partnerships. I have already started to progress towards my goal of engaging students and increasing academic success in the refugees by redesigning the homework help sessions. Through observational research of the African refugee culture, I have started learning how to best meet the educational needs of African refugee youth. The children need more entertaining, engaging and culturally sensitive homework help activities. I am working with other Virginia Tech students to synthesize my participatory research data and, as a result of the research, create fun and engaging "student booklets” to supplement homework at our homework help sessions. These educational booklets will be sensitive to the various educational levels of the children and they will include African culture, arts and crafts, puzzles and games. Instead of the children having to complete tedious exercises after a full school day and homework, these booklets will encourage the children to learn study skills in the subjects of English, math, science, history and critical thinking while having fun and bonding with Virginia Tech student mentors.

Other can help by either joining the Virginia Tech Global Neighbors at Pilot Street team, or by using our creative program as a model to create similar refugee service programs in different areas.