Hundreds of Afghan and Ukrainian refugees now call Lincoln home

LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) - In the last 10 months, Lincoln has welcomed large groups of refugees from both Afghanistan and Ukraine, and now some of the attention has turned to raise funds for their resettlement.

About six weeks ago, the Lincoln Resettlement Fund was created to help get money to agencies that assist in getting those refugees adjusted to life in Lincoln.

So far Lancaster County has received about 445 afghan refugees and upwards of 65 Ukrainian refugees have found their homes here. It’s more difficult to pinpoint the exact number from Ukraine because their path to get here was more chaotic with war breaking out.

The United Way is working to raise money to help the refugees in multiple ways.

“It looks a lot different than it did this time a year ago when we were seeing virtually no refugee resettlement because of federal policy and because of COVID,” said Meagan Liesveld, with the United Way. “But we really saw a significant change of that in September 2021, so in the past 10 months we’ve experienced a lot of refugee resettlement in our community.”

In total, agencies that help with the process have requested about $500,000 needs and to date, the fund has raised just under $320,000.

That money goes towards things like case management for families and individuals, transportation, and childcare.

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