Helping Afghan Families Start Over in Wisconsin

People donated clothing, footwear, personal hygiene products, backpacks, luggage and baby items.

In August, we learned that refugees from Afghanistan were being relocated to Wisconsin’s Fort McCoy.

The Ho-Chunk Nation was coordinating a donation drive to provide Afghan families with essential items for their new lives in Wisconsin. Fort McCoy sits on Ho-Chunk traditional territory and they wanted to welcome Afghan families and their allies to their homeland.

Madison College recognizes and respects the Ho-Chunk Nation as a community partner. In this spirit, we reached out and agreed to join forces in gathering donations for the refugee families.

We collected items at all regional and metro campuses for three weeks. This led up to our September 17 drive-thru event at Truax Campus. People donated clothing, footwear, personal hygiene products, backpacks, luggage and baby items.

About 35 volunteers made the drive-thru event a success. People from across the college directed traffic, unloaded vehicles, sorted and packed items. That day alone generated 14 pallets of donated goods. This was enough to fill our facilities truck three times.

Roughly 115 vehicles came through with donation items.

We then committed ourselves to sorting all of the items so they could be given to families more quickly.

Not only did we see our faculty, staff, and students give time and materials to the donation drive, we made connections with community organizations across the district. We were all connected by a desire to help.

I’m proud of this effort because it allowed us to strengthen our relationship with our partners and put the mission of our college—meeting the evolving needs of our diverse communities—into further action.

–Contributed by Nicole Soulier, Madison College community engagement coordinator