About New Americans Center
New Americans Center is a resource center for Texas refugees and immigrants, particularly those in the greater Austin area. New Americans Center provides ongoing practical support, education and cultural orientation through people who understand both the refugees’ language and culture of origin.
Refugees are placed in Texas communities with the help of the local state resettlement agencies and provide new arrivals with comprehensive assistance for three months. Three months of support is not enough to learn how to get along in a new society. Most refugees arrive with no belongings, don’t speak the language, don’t understand the culture, and they have lived with dislocation, terrible loss and fear for years.
In addition to offering a broad and continuing arrangement of basic support services, New Americans Center works with the refugee community to facilitate conciliation and healing and to build comfort with their new culture. We support and advocate for refugees in crisis. We create connections between the Texas receiving community and new arrivals.
New Americans Center works toward successful integration and self-sufficiency for its refugee clients.
New Americans (refugees) have come from hardship, war, persecution, and famine, but they are resilient. New Americans Center’s goal is to empower refugees to become leaders in their community and cultural ambassadors to their receiving community.
History
New Americans Center was inspired by the experience of its Executive Director, Serukiza Kennedy Mutware Rurangwa.
Mr.Kennedy came to the United States from Rwanda in 2011. He worked for several years as a caseworker for a Utah resettlement agency ( Catholic Community Services), helping refugees with the many needs and issues that arise after they arrive. He eventually became an employment specialist providing New Americans with pre-employment counseling and post-employment support and assistance.
Refugees and immigrants came to know Kennedy as a source of support. Refugees who were no longer receiving assistance from the resettlement agency, were bringing him their human service applications, their children’s school registrations, their utility bills asking for his help and counseling.
Kennedy saw the ongoing need of Texas for support in many areas. In addition to practical help, he saw that they needed help to overcome the pain of war and trauma. They needed to learn new ways to interact with fellow New Americans (refugees) and members of the host community.
Mr. Kennedy is personally dedicated to reconciliation and peace-building.
He realized that refugees are best served by people who speak their language and have shared the same experiences with, as well as an understanding of American culture.
He established the New Americans Center in 2022 with the vision of settled refugees helping new refugees learn the ways of their new home, helping them to heal and re-engage as active and successful citizens of Texas and the United States.
Our refugee clients
People become refugees because their homes have been destroyed by war. They are forced to leave their homes because of political, ethnic or religious persecution.
Refugees spend years or months in temporary refugee camps. They eventually permitted to relocate to a country where they can live peacefully without fear. The United Nations high commissioner for refugees assists refugees by recommending them to high developed countries as a part of finding a long lasting solution for their needs.
New Americans Center’s team
