About 50 volunteers and staff members broke bread at the annual IWC Volunteer Appreciation Dinner, held at the San Antonio Mennonite Church on Nov. 10.
While enjoying a chicken dinner and dessert, attendees heard stories from volunteers, staff, and successful asylum seekers.
Yvonne Dilling, Chair of the IWC Advocacy Committee and founding member, spoke of the IWC’s early years and the needs she and others perceived for migrants seekig help at the bus station.
Volunteers, such as Michele Riboul, spoke of what they gained from the IWC volunteer experience. Riboul came to the U.S. from Haiti as the child of a privileged family. She planned to return to the Island but instead fell in love with a U.S. citizen, married, and joined the U.S. Air Force. Upon retirement, she was looking for ways to continue serving the community. She is tri-lingual (English, Spanish, and French) and saw that her language skills could be used by IWC. She hopes her own immigrant background will give migrants hope that they too can thrive in a new land.
IWC Board Chair Katie Myers shared some statistics with the group.
In 2023 alone, IWC
- Assisted 8320 children who were at the bus station alone.
- Delivered more than 50,000 sack lunches and 6,500 mobile Loaves and Fishes lunch bags.
- Created and delivered thousands of backpacks, tote bags, and kid bags.
- Handed out 1,600 pairs of shoelaces.
Since July 2020, IWC assisted 196,789 individuals at the bus station and airport.
She added, “Yet beyond the numbers, we know that the real impact is made one person at a time—face to face in the kindness you offer, in the assurance and assistance you provide, in the small item that seems to arrive just when they need it most.”
To learn more about volunteering for the IWC, click here.
