Unlocking Dreams
Welcome to Yamanna
I am glad to have you join us in our vision to glorify God through the equipping of refugee and immigrant families to move from surviving to thriving. Yamanna means ‘God has already provided’ and through this blog I will share the beautiful tapestry God is weaving together here in Cleveland, Ohio through Yamanna. God often uses the least of us in the least of places to do the greatest of things, so get ready for a journey of faith, prayer, planting seeds and harvesting dreams.
You may wonder what all this means; what does surviving mean? How is thriving defined? These are the right questions to be asking because it shows that you have lifted your eyes to look around and see what is happening in the most unlikely places.
My Story: From "Other" to Advocate
For those who don’t know me, I am one of those most unlikely of places. My odyssey with immigration began before I was born, as my immigrant parents made their way to America separately and met here in Cleveland in the 1950’s. Born the youngest of 4 sisters, we learned early on what it meant to be other. Though my parents spoke English, they had distinct accents that always drew attention to them in any room. People always reacted to them, either in delight for the lilting brogue of my Irish mother or in complete confusion, to the thick brogue of my Scottish father.
From them, I learned one of the greatest lessons of my life that I have been blessed to pass on to the refugee and immigrant families I have worked with over the last 15 years; perseverance. America is a place to never give up; your next opportunity is just around the corner.
The Mission in Motion
With this mindset, and over a decade of walking life with my refugee friends through my work at The Hope Center for Refugees and Immigrants, I opened Yamanna with one thought in mind; this can’t be all that God has for them. He has brought them through the worst that the world can throw at them to give them the opportunity that America offers, but often, the greatest mountain they have to scale is entering American culture. A mish-mash of cultures, ideas, values, religions and rules, both spoken and unspoken, it is unlike anything they have faced before and sometimes, it defeats them; at least for a little while.
Enter Yamanna; through refugee life coaching, resource connection and advocacy, we are perched to help those who are ready to move to the next step in their journey. For some, that means getting a GED or entering college, for others it means leaving a legacy or helping their community. Their dreams are varied but their spirit is often the same; I lost so much time waiting for my opportunity, I am ready to move forward.
A Dream Unlocked
Recently, a beautiful illustration of this deep-seated desire to embrace the future they have dreamed of for their entire lives, came to me through an unexpected source, a trip to Put-in-Bay with one of my Afghan friends. We approached a fence in a park with hundreds of locks attached to the links. My friend asked me if there was a deeper cultural meaning to the locks; what did they represent? I had to confess that I didn’t know; maybe they represented love? Relationships that are unbreakable? I shrugged as if to say, who knows.
She shared with me that they also do this in her area of Afghanistan but for a completely different reason; they place a lock when they have a dream and leave it in place until the dream comes true and only then do they open the lock.
It struck me, only then do they open the lock, the visual representation of what Yamanna seeks to do; journey with them to accomplish their dreams, to help them unlock their locks. There are many locks that still exist amongst our refugee and immigrant neighbors in Cleveland; they come in all shapes and sizes, some young and some old, some tarnished from exposure to years of waiting but all ready to be unlocked.
