SPOKANE, Wash. — The International Rescue Committee hosted an event on Friday celebrating immigrant and refugee women in Spokane ahead of International Women’s Day.
The event celebrated and connected these women with different immigrant and refugee organizations across the city.
Hawa Haidari was one of the women at this event. Originally from Afghanistan, she escaped with her sister in 2021 when the Taliban took over.
“We had no hope, no dream to stay there and if we were to stay there, they would have killed us,” Haidari said.
Once in America, getting settled was its own challenge.
“When I came here, it was a little bit hard for me to have the language or the job, all of this, but I tried so hard,” she said.
Haidari said events like Friday’s could have helped, which is why she now works at the International Rescue Committee helping women who are in the shoes she was in years ago.
“They ask me a lot of the time ‘What should we do? Where should we go to enroll kids in school?'” she said. “They have a lot of questions so they definitely need somebody to help them.
For many of the women at the event, they were able to connect with services offering legal aid and child care. They were also able to connect with other women that have been through similar experiences.
“An event like this just gives women an opportunity to connect with one another and also to see other women who look like them who live in Spokane and also just to know that they have a community that cares about them,” said Manzanita House’s Teresa Schock.
Haidari says to be able to celebrate the bravery it took these women to leave home and the strength all women hold is a special thing.
“In Afghanistan, the women didn’t have much opportunity to celebrate,” she said. “Here, the women have a lot of opportunities and they discover their talents and show others what a woman can do.”
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