Volunteer Profile: Cheryl Buchta

When Cheryl Buchta went to the post office two years ago, she encountered some people asking her to sign a petition to stop refugees from coming into Idaho. It was around the time there were terrorist attacks in Paris.

At that time, she didn’t know much about refugees, but she knew she had to do something. Later that day, she went home and Googled refugees in Boise and found the Agency for New Americans. She got in contact with the volunteer coordinator and started the process of becoming a volunteer.

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Family Mentor
Cheryl started out volunteering as a family mentor. She admitted it wasn’t the easiest job; the language barrier makes it difficult to communicate to one another, and Cheryl often felt like she was doing the wrong thing. “You don’t know if they’re religious, and you don’t want to offend them,” she said.

To work past this, she kept to her basic rule: the most important thing “is just to smile.” With this in mind, she was able to be a mentor a family. They were a young couple in their early twenties with two young children and had been in Boise for about a month.  

“The husband was raised in a refugee camp. His parents were killed by Al-Shabaab, and he had his toe cut off. He was taken to camps at age 12 or 13. He was either taken care of by someone, or he was very smart. He learned to keep himself alive.”

Although mentoring can be challenging, Cheryl says that the language barrier should not discourage anyone from volunteering. “Signing up and showing up is a huge step to making sure people feel welcome here. The U.S. is often referred to as a land of opportunity, and there will be disappointment when they get here,” she said. “It’s kind of like going away to college and being thrown into a new environment. You wish you could go back, but at least then you were familiar with the culture.” 

Front Desk Volunteer
After a few months, the family Cheryl mentored moved to Oregon, and Cheryl started working the front desk for about 4-5 hours per week at the ANA. Her first day at the desk, a lady came in to talk to the staff about something that had something happened. She was screaming and the police had to be called to help her with a situation.

“Usually,” said Cheryl, “the desk isn’t so exciting. In fact, lately the desk has been almost completely dead.” Though it used to pick up and get busy in the afternoon, Cheryl said it doesn’t anymore.

“We all know why that is,” she stated, referring to the current administration's cut-downs on refugee arrivals.

In addition to working the desk, Cheryl has helped volunteer at booths with the ANA around the Treasure Valley at different events. Volunteering has also helped Cheryl appreciate the hard work the ANA staff does for their clients. “They put in a lot of work after hours with fundraisers and different events.”

Family Driver
Now, Cheryl volunteers as a driver. “Today, I picked up an expectant mother from her baby class at St Michael’s. She’s only been here a couple of months, she came from Congo, and she will deliver her baby in one month,” she said. “She has to deliver her baby in a hospital where she doesn’t understand the process. She’ll have no control,” Cheryl said, referring to language and medical culture barriers, “and she’ll have to depend on strangers to take care of her.”

Drivers are needed because refugees often don’t have a car or even a driver’s license when they start out. Most of their money goes to housing, and saving for a car gets pushed back on their list of priorities. Still, Cheryl is surprised by how well refugees know their way around Boise.

“People tend to know how to get places better than me. One day I was trying to get to Civic Apartments, and I was having trouble getting there. The husband of the family told me which road to turn on. They know their routes, they just need help with transportation.”

Cheryl enjoys driving refugees to where they need to be because it puts a face to the word “refugee.” She also signed up to drive so that she could have more interactions with refugees like she used to get while working the desk. She used to see a lot of people when they first got here, and she wanted more of that.

“Hearing personal accounts is so different than reading events on the news. They really just have to move forward, they can’t think about what they left behind. But when you do that, you lose something, you lose your past. That’s really hard to do.”

She also shows her admiration and empathy for refugees starting their lives over in Boise. “Many of the refugees I’ve volunteered with are smart and educated people who have gone to university. When they come here, they give up their lives, their dreams. They just need an opportunity, they just need to get back on their feet.”

With the help of volunteers like Cheryl, refugees can have the extra support needed to make that possible.