NOV 22 2022
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson visited the Canopy team at our Fayetteville office in October. We had the incredible opportunity to thank him for his crucial vocal support of our Afghan Allies and his ongoing support of Canopy over the last several years.
Clint Schnekloth, the Chairman of Canopy’s Board of Directors, wrote a blog discussing the meeting and our thankfulness for our state’s support as we welcome our newest neighbors. Read Clint’s blog below.
Today Governor Asa Hutchinson visited the Canopy NWA offices. For readers unfamiliar with Canopy, we are a refugee resettlement non-profit started in 2015 in order to bring direct refugee resettlement back to the state of Arkansas.
What started with one very humble office in our church has now expanded tremendously, with our own office space for about 28 full-time staff. Just in the past year we have resettled from every part of the world. These new friends are improving in so many ways the culture of Northwest Arkansas. They’re great neighbors and friends.
The governor first visited us in the summer of 2015 when we applied to the State department to become a resettlement center. Asa Hutchinson has become over the ensuing years a champion of refugees in our state. In 2020 he sat before the state legislature and defended the resettlement program from detractors. Most notably to me, he sat down and listened to refugees. That’s not common.
When the governor visits your office, you work hard to present well. Our Canopy staff knocked it out of the park. In an opening conversation we discussed how to raise the rate at which refugees arriving in Arkansas become self-sufficient. Although our rates are higher than national averages (due in large part to employment opportunities in the region and our fantastic employment team) some of our families still struggle because state benefits drop off severely and early compared to other state programs.
In other words, refugee resettlement stands as an example of why and how expanded services like SNAP can benefit those working toward self-sufficiency. This provided us to make a case not just for refugees but benefit-recipients as a whole.
The highlight of the visit, however, were the presentations from refugee families themselves. An Afghan family graciously gave of their time to meet the governor, kids in tow. A local entrepreneur, Eca – the owner of Mossi’s Auto & Sales, presented a “virtual” tour of his auto-body shop and talked about his business aspirations. Multiple staff-persons from Afghanistan spoke of their experience coming to the United States in the past year, the trauma and struggle and hopelessness that comes from knowing the impact on the Afghan people of the exit of the United States and the take-over by the Taliban.
As we stood around sipping homemade chai (not “chai tea,” as I’m reminded, since chai means “tea” just as naan means “bread” so you don’t need to say “naan bread”), and then as dozens of staff members made their way through the space and the governor’s security to the back porch for a photo, I couldn’t help but remember that small gathering with the governor seven years ago and think about how far we have come.
Today, refugees and Canopy NWA have friends across the state. If you mention Canopy in conversation in Northwest Arkansas, the most common response is the exclamation, “I love Canopy!” Colleges and universities organize to provide welcome kits, area churches form co-sponsorship teams for newly arriving refugees, employers in every locale want to hire refugees, grant-giving agencies and state and federal partners support the work.
And when you’re in a room like we were in today, you know why.
Such energy and enthusiasm for knowing one another across cultural boundaries; celebrating diverse languages and cultures; a witness in a still humble office (we don’t have nearly enough parking) to what makes our nation who it is and has always made it who it is—immigrants.
In a historical moment when hyper-partisan politics dominates the headlines, refugee resettlement in Arkansas is as non-partisan of work as you can find. Which isn’t to say there’s still lots of work to be done disabusing Arkansans of faulty notions about immigrants, starting with not calling them “illegal aliens” but rather “asylum seekers” and more importantly “friends.”
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