Welcome

The Somali Bantu Community Association was a non-profit organization formed by a group of Somali Bantu refugees to the United States in 2005. The group assisted in helping refugees to integrate into American culture, and was funded by the US Department of Refugee Resettlement. This fall, we reformed as the Organization for Refugee and Immigrant Success, expanding our mission as well as increasing and diversifying our board members.

Our board members, volunteers, and partners have considerable experience helping refugees succeed, and we are ideally positioned to make a difference. The expertise and tremendous value of the organization lies in its unique knowledge, both culturally and linguistically, of the population we serve.

Manchester is a national refugee resettlement center, accepting 100-150 new refugees each year through the International Institute of New Hampshire. New arrivals receive cash assistance and, in most cases, are placed within jobs within the first eight months in the US. But the process of sustainable integration requires a longer-term commitment. This is where ORIS comes in; we are a provider of continued integration services specifically targeting the newly-arrived refugee and immigrant population.