Open Doors for Refugees is a volunteer-driven organization founded in 2016 and based in Madison, Wisconsin, whose mission is to help refugees make a home in the Madison area. We work closely with partner organizations to provide furniture, winter clothing, transportation, language, workforce development, childcare, and other support services to refugees and other immigrants in the Madison community.
Mission
Open Doors for Refugees welcomes refugees to the Madison area by helping them make a home, celebrating their cultures and contributions, and accelerating their progress towards self-reliance and community involvement.
Refugees are a community that face numerous challenges in the best of times, and these are not the best of times. Though the anti-refugee sentiment that has infected so much of our national discourse is not as prevalent in Madison, it is not absent. The national discourse has real-world effects for Madison’s refugee community, including the loss of funding for essential services.
Refugees face cultural barriers, language barriers, systemic issues of racism and sexism, as well as the deep and wide-ranging personal challenges that encourage them to come here in the first place. A refugee community leader once told me, “No one flees home unless home is the mouth of a shark”.
Open Doors for Refugees exists to welcome refugees as they move into the Madison area and support them while they are here. Everything we do is designed to help refugees overcome challenges in housing, employment, culture, and language (to name a few), ultimately making Madison a place of greater equity and inclusion.
Values
Open Doors for Refugees is guided by the following values:
Act with Compassion, Understanding, and Respect: We strive to understand and respect refugees’ values, customs, and decisions. We welcome, serve, and stand beside our new neighbors with compassion and without judgment of cultural, educational, political, social, and economic backgrounds.
Cultivate Community: We foster a welcoming community for refugees in the Madison area by raising awareness about the needs of refugees, highlighting the benefits that diversity brings to our community, and engaging the public in efforts to address the needs of refugees.
Promote Self-Sufficiency and Community Involvement: We support refugees to become self-sufficient members of the community by gaining new knowledge and skills, identifying opportunities to build self-confidence and self-reliance, and facilitating community connections and involvement. We encourage the sharing and celebration of customs and cultures.
Serve with Integrity: We recognize, as representatives of ODFR in the community, the need to carry out our roles and responsibilities with professionalism and integrity, and to respect all personal and organizational boundaries and sensitivities.
Seek Collaboration and Partnerships: We establish mutually beneficial partnerships with local organizations and agencies. We provide services that complement, rather than duplicate, what our partners and other organizations offer. We value and respect all volunteers and the roles, obligations, and autonomy of our partners.
Respect Confidentiality: We respect the privacy of refugees and are committed to maintaining the confidentiality of their personal information. We agree to adhere to the confidentiality requirements of our partner organizations and agencies.
Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
Open Doors takes steps to be a place of equality and inclusion internally. We strive to have a diverse and inclusive board, including members of the refugee community. We hold regular listening sessions with various communities within the broader refugee community, and intentionally partner with diverse organizations, such as Centro Hispano, The African Center for Community Development, and Jewish Social Services.
Our Volunteers
We support new and recent arrivals in a variety of ways, largely through a network of volunteer teams.
Most notably, our Donations and Move-In teams collect donations of furniture and household items and use them to furnish and stock apartments for arriving refugees. We also have teams that provide Translation, Transportation, ESL, and Employment services.
Our Home Supply team provides basic (non-food) supplies to new arrivals every month for their first year here. We also have a very active Events team that hosts or co-hosts four major events annually, and in the last four years, has hosted or co-hosted about 20 one-of-a-kind public events.
Please see our Volunteer page for more information or to get involved.
Our History
Open Doors began in the spring of 2016 as an offshoot of an event to raise awareness about the Syrian refugee crisis. At the end of the event, half the people stayed to talk about what we could do. Through a series of meetings and events that followed, we eventually morphed into Open Doors for Refugees with our current mission and focus.
Since then, almost two thousand people have reached out to Open Doors, and several hundred have signed up to be on one or more of our teams. We invite you to become involved!
Our Funding
Officially we are a project of, and obtain 501(c)(3) status through, our fiscal sponsor, the Center for Community Stewardship. Our Leadership Council provides overall leadership, direction, and policy decision-making for ODFR. We are not a faith-based organization and are not affiliated with any faith-based organization.
We subsist largely on the generous donations of individuals and organizations, although in 2021 and 2022 we received three grants that have funded our Skill Building, W-2 and Car Grants program. If you’d like, you can make a tax deductible donation to us here, and thank you for your generosity.
Our Leadership Team
- Jason Mack, Executive Director
- Margaret Brauer
- Sara Camacho
- Bob Chase
- Mari Gasiorowicz
- Alex Houghton
- Hillary J
- Madeline Uraneck
- Blia Xiong-Lechner
- And others who commit their time and energy to this cause. Thank you!
Jason Mack, Open Doors for Refugees’ Executive Director
Jason began as the Executive Director of Open Doors for Refugees in October of 2024.
Before that, he was the pastor of Underwood Memorial Baptist Church in Wauwatosa, WI, and previously served as the associate pastor at First Baptist Church in Madison and as the founding pastor of New Leaf Church in College Park, MD. Jason received a Master’s Degree from Wesley Seminary and a Doctorate from Central Seminary, where he studied organizational leadership and innovation.
He lives in Madison, WI, with his wife, Tara, and their teenager, Ethan. Together, they love watching sci-fi and going traveling. In his free time, Jason enjoys watching movies, playing volleyball, and learning to play the drums.