Come and see us at the Center for Refugees and Immigrants of Tennessee if you are a refugee who has been residing more than eight months and fewer than five years in the United States of America. We have services to help refugee families, providing caseworkers and employment specialists for up to five years. We work under a federally funded program that is currently serving thousands of refugees from around the world. Some of the specific services under the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) that we offer are Social Adjustment and Employment services, as well as health screenings, referrals, and financial literacy classes.

In order to fully cope with the challenging environment that refugees encounter, social adjustment services help them when they come into the country. We have a highly dedicated staff, daily providing free services such as filling out applications for Food Stamps, Social Security, Social Security Disability Income, Unemployment, Weekly Certification, Family First, Low Income Housing, Section Eight and more.

Employment services are the most sought after services that we offer to our refugee clients. We have great connections to local businesses that help us to link our clients to various employers in and outside Nashville. Our relationship with employers around Nashville has abundantly helped our clients to build up their careers and work ethic. We put our clients in a place where they can establish a good working environment and come up with awards and good recommendations.

We also offer health screenings and financial literacy classes in different sites. Refugee health screenings are in partnership with local health providers and hospitals that cooperate with us and are willing to provide free health screening. We mainly offer financial literacy classes in three different apartment complexes where a large number of our clients reside. Financial literacy classes help refugees in managing money, using banks and allow them to ask any financial questions regarding mortgage, buying a house, starting up new business, etc.

 So, come and see us at the Center for Refugees and Immigrants of Tennessee where we provide beneficial and helpful services to refugees from different countries. We are very thankful to Office of Refugees Resettlement and Tennessee Office for Refugees for providing funds to help refugees in Nashville.  You can give us a call at 615-366-6868 or email me at [email protected]  for any questions or help.

Refugee elders are very proud of having such a great opportunity that our Elders Program provides to them, which keeps them engaged every morning. If we didn’t have our Elders Program it would be very hard for refugee elders just to stay at home, spending their leisure time without doing anything.

It brought happiness to me when I noticed that elders are eager to learn new things and they still have that courage, even they are in their golden years. I personally felt very happy when I saw the big achievement that our elders are making on my first day of teaching in the program. I am very pleased and happy to inform our readers that elders are doing great because of the hard work that our Elders program manager, Grant, has been doing to make their life easy.  Their smiling faces demonstrate the progress they have made since they enrolled in the classes.

The Center for Refugees and Immigrants of Tennessee is proud to offer one of the few programs in Nashville that keeps refugees elders busy and helps them think less about challenges in the past. Elders are not only offered classes that they attend on regular basis but also social time and case management services from our dedicated case managers to help make their lives a little easier.

I still remember the day when I landed my feet at Nashville International Airport in 2008. The first thing I saw after getting to the baggage claim, were some American caseworkers from World Relief holding some beautiful flowers in their hands, to welcome me and my family to Nashville.

Though it was an entirely different world for me, it didn’t trouble me to get along in this new environment.  That was, in large part, because of the hard work and effort that organization gave.

The help I received from my caseworkers was very important and precious to my ability to become self-sufficient. My job at CRIT helps me to give that same assistance in return to the people who are in need today. I know firsthand how it feels when you have no clue how to fit into a new place, but excellent service providers like CRIT are here to help newcomers and make the transition as easy as possible.