Iskashitaa Refugee Network is a grass roots organization that helps rebuild refugee lives through a 100% volunteer-based model. Staff and volunteers unite refugees and the community through unique programs designed to empower the refugees. Programs emphasize community connections, sharing, and English language practice to build community of refugees and volunteers. Iskashitaa has also worked to build a networking community among Tucson area refugee volunteers and agencies.
Iskashitaa is under the fiscal umbrella of St. Francis in the Foothills UMC., a non profit in the State of Arizona. Iskashitaa is in the process of becoming an independent non-profit association.
Iskashitaa Refugee Network empowers refugees by creating opportunities to better integrate with the larger Tucson community while gaining skills that serve them in America.
Refugee students were recruited in 2003 to participate in the Tucson Youth Fruit Mapping and Gleaning Project to identify fruit tree locations, harvest, and redistribute locally grown food resources (fruits/vegetables), many of which were going to waste. After organizing four of these youth fruit mapping programs (see Tucson's Food Conspiracy article), the budding grassroots organization received a grant from United Way to regularly begin harvesting backyard fruit and gleaning from local farms with refugees.
In the first year of working with Somali Bantu youth, Barbara was taught the word "Iskashitaa". Iskashitaa is the Somali Bantu word for working cooperatively together and fit perfectly with what the group was becoming. As Barbara built a grassroots organization that focused on empowering and learning together, she knew no other word fit as well as Iskashitaa. At that time, Somali Bantu did not have a written representation of their language and therefore, Barbara was challenged with the task of creating the spelling for Iskashitaa.
Although Ishkashitaa started out working with Somali Bantus, we are increasingly working with other refugee populations from around the world. Iskashitaa serves refugees from Afghanistan, Bhutan, Burma, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Iraq, Rwanda, other groups from Somalia, and Sudan.