The IRC/SF has been funded by the Office of Refugee Resettlement to provide linguistically and culturally appropriate assistance to newly arrived Assyrian Christian refugees in Stanislaus County. IRC resettled nearly 300 Assyrian refugees there through its office in Turlock in 2007 and expects as many as 500 to arrive this year. The majority of the refugees were forced to leave Iran due to religious persecution, and were processed through a State Department Overseas Processing Entity (OPE) in Vienna, Austria. 

The project serves all newly arrived refugees in the county through support and assistance to the Stanislaus County Community Services and the Health Services Systems, the points of the county's infrastructure most impacted by a surge of Assyrian refugees there.

The UA project focuses on assistance with interpretation and translation at county services as well as with transportation assistance between county services located in the Central Valley cities of Modesto and Turlock. The project intends to utilize a maximum number of volunteers from the Assyrian Community.

To learn more about this project contact Vivien Yaghobsalmasi at vivien.yaghobsalmasi@theIRC.org

To volunteer as a driver, contact David Babadalir at david.babadalir@theIRC.org