If you need it, the shipping address for RISSE is: 715 Morris St., Albany, N.Y., 12208-2208
The RISSE Amazon Wish List Page is re-stocked and up and running, offering a wide range of opportunities to help the refugees and immigrants who are coming to America. i love the freedom of it, I can spend $7 or $50, choose what I want to offer.
RISSE is closed on the weekends, so weekdays are a good time to buy things (the post office will re-deliver if nobody is there). I sent them a pair of walkie talkies, but they have so many things that the kids and adults and teachers need urgently from power strips to puzzles to first aid kits to pencil sharpeners to thermometers to toys and games.
This is a great moment of decision for the idea of America and refugees. When refugees come to the United States, USCRI, a federally supported organization, helps them to find homes and get settled. After that, they are on their own, RISSE is their only source of help and support.
Federal subsidies are being eliminated or slashed and the idea of America as an open gate to the yearning and oppressed of the world is in jeopardy. I will never forget the horror stories I hear from these sweet and hard-working people – spouses killed or left behind, stories of genocide, rape, murder, decades in teeming, filthy refugee camps.
The young people I meet have suffered trauma after trauma, yet are so good-natured and eager to be Americans.
Every morning, I will buy one thing on the RISSE Amazon Gift Wish Page. Now that I have clicked on the button to send the items to RISSE, the host, it happens automatically. There are items that cost as little as a few dollars, some that are more expensive, but not expensive. This is so easy to do, Amazon knows how to do it.
I feel good when I do this, it has become almost a sacrament for me, it helps me to begin the day and feel good about myself, and also to help others who wish to do good find a simple way to do it, it literally takes seconds. I like that they get to tell us what they need, we don’t have to guess.
Last week, when they first put up the page, it sold out in minutes, this version is bigger and wider ranging, and they have figured out how to do it at RISSE, the refugee and immigrant support center in Albany, N.Y.
Please take a look at the page, and if you are so inclined, send them something from you or the Army of Good, I see it as a patriotic as well as humane act. The kind of America my grandparents risked their lives to come to is generous and compassion, not angry and selfish. I feel I am speaking up for my country every time I send something to RISSE. And for these very beautiful children, who have seen things children ought not to see.
RISSE offers classes in English, economics, taxes, job hunting. They have an after school program that offers tutoring, two hot heals a day and support for children.
We are learning not to accept that, and I will not except it for the RISSE kids, either. Thanks for considering this, you can find the wish list page here. It will be refreshed and updated regularly, I am told. Thanks.
If you need it for Amazon, the shipping address for RISSE is 715 Morris St., 12208-2208.