Internship Spotlight: Afnaan Qureshi
Summer intern Afnaan Qureshi is working with Rochester Refugee Resettlement Services, which finds safe and affordable housing for new arrivals. A Rochester Institute of Technology senior from Weston, Massachusetts, he’s majoring in philosophy and political science and hopes to later receive a Master’s in Public Administration and then attend law school.
He talked with Jim Memmott, a UNAR board member, and Lia Bellomio, UNAR’s Business Director, about his internship and the insights it has given him into the challenges refugees face. Here’s some of their conversation:
How is your internship going?
The first day I walked in, I got to go meet with an Afghani family along with a caseworker. They put me right into stuff to do.
One of my current tasks is a housekeeping presentation. New refugee families come in, and a lot of them have not lived in a house in a long time, or at all. It's not that they don't know what a house is. But they’ve been in such war-torn situations.
Where are the refugees coming from?
I've gotten to meet a good amount of Somali and Afghani refugees. There are refugees from Myanmar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There are some from Kenya and, of course, Syria and Iraq. There are people from just about every demographic, people from different conflicts in different places.
What are you learning about the refugees you’re helping?
I think the big thing is how human everyone is. This is probably the most diverse group that I've gotten to work with in terms of what their qualifications are.
But no matter their situation, it's important to ask them what they think. They are so excited to get back into a world where they can be good citizens. It's been taken from them. And they are, more often than not, overachievers, very willing to work, and do jobs that a lot of us aren't willing to do. They’re thirsting to live in a place where their family cannot be killed on a daily basis.
You’ve helped repair housing for refugees. How does that fit in?
The housing projects have really impressed me. I was building a porch on one last week. It was literally a crack house before the agency bought it. They’ve been refurbishing it, cleaning it. While we were working on the outside, a neighbor came over and said really nice things to us. One of the ladies said, “I'll cook food for the crew tomorrow.” It’s a very visible impact that resettlement has in communities.
What else does the agency do besides housing?
It has developed a mental health program because these families have gone through so much. Once a week for one hour, the families, the moms, or even the dads, will come in, and they just will talk about what's going on.
I never even thought about that for refugees. We've been seeing the rise of the importance of mental health for college students, but it is so much more heightened a need for refugees.
What’s the biggest impact the internship has had on you?
I’ve been able to connect with people of diverse backgrounds, people from places I haven't gotten. I’ve interacted with languages that I haven't heard, accents that I don't recognize. With that comes a great opportunity to learn a lot of different cultures. I'm really excited to get to see more of these families.
We are grateful for Afnaan’s contributions to Rochester Refugee Resettlement Services and our Community. If you want to apply to be an intern for UNAR or one of our community partners, learn more about them, and apply on handshake.
