Over the course of the next six months, Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Nashville will help resettle 150 Afghans into local communities as part of the effort to help them escape Taliban rule under the U.S. State Department’s Afghan Placement Assistance Program.
“We serve people because we can address their needs, and addressing the humanitarian needs of refugees has been part of the mission of Catholic Charities in the Diocese of Nashville since its founding in the early 1960s,” said Rick Musacchio, diocesan director of communications. “Catholic Charities works in collaboration with federal partners to make the re-settlement process manageable and not overwhelming for local communities,” he added.
Kellye Branson, director of Refugee and Immigration Ser-vices, is heading the effort on behalf of Catholic Charities. “We had a really quick turnaround to think about it. We were asked how many we could accommodate,” Branson said.
“To get everybody’s thoughts about what might be possible,” she reached out to several entities, she said, including the Nashville mayor’s office, metro-area schools, health officials, the Tennessee Office for Refugees, the Nashville International Center for Empowerment and other local organizations that serve refugees.
“I looked at how many refugees we were projected to get over the next year, how many refugees we’ve served in the past and 150 was where we landed as a number that we felt comfortable accepting over the next six months, that we could garner enough support for, and that we could manage when it came to providing services,” she told. the Tennessee Register, Nashville’s diocesan newspaper.