Event Description:  

Join Foreignairs in learning how a host’s idea to open their home in a crisis has transformed into a global non-profit and how you can get involved.

When: June 23, 2022 12pm-1pm PST

Where: Awedience and AirTV

Background/Vision: 

• Celebrate___.org [redacted] and its achievements
• Learn about the diverse causes ___.org has supported, providing people in crises with resources during their immigration journey
• (present & future)
• How specifically the Foreignairs community can leverage their skills to support the Org (cultural understanding, language support, housing support, travel credits)

you use? Who owns what action and when is it due?)

Overview Event Agenda (Run of Show in timezone)

Timestamp	Action	Speaker	Length
11:45	Speakers arrive in Zoom, tech check		15 mins
12:00	Wait for audience, music playing	On Air	5 mins
12:05	Opening		5 mins
12:08	Speaker intro SB Bio 1. Self Intro 2. Challenges 3. Proudest moment		5-7 mins
12:15	Story of the Org & Past initiatives 4. Host idea -> Non profit 5. Previous Campaigns		10-15 mins
12:30	Current work 6. Collab with other orgs 7. Implications of legal status 8. Decision where to help 9. Frameworks for D&I 10. Current focus & what’s next-> […]  She is in her final year as a medical student from Lugansk State Medical University in Ukraine […]	IraTrigger for OnAir production to play video	20 mins
	PLAY AMINA VIDEO (0:56 mins)
	Trigger warning “The following video we are about to watch has episodes and descriptions of violence which include explosions and destruction.”	IraTrigger for OnAir to play video
	PLAY NOVA UKRAINE VIDEO (2:06 mins)
12:50	Call for action 11. How can we get involved		5 mins
12:55	Outro & Thank yous Foreignairs		5 mins (less but giving a little buffer at the end)

Script

Opening (5 mins)

[A]Hello everyone, my name is [A], my pronouns are she/her and I am the lead for Foreignairs as well as a member of the Regulatory Response team.

Immigrant Heritage Month is a time to celebrate all immigrants- those with and without privilege. We would like to highlight the energy and resilience of immigrant communities all around the world. During the month, we also want to take time to reflect on and honor the many contributions that immigrants have made to enrich our population.

In case you missed it, this week on Monday was World Refugee Day. Each year on June 20, it commends the strength and courage of people who have been forced to leave their home country to escape conflict or persecution. Be sure to check out our Foreignairs@ website or Slack channels for more information and how you can support.

This year, we’re excited to have partnered with ___.org to learn more about how a host’s idea in times of crisis became a global non-profit. For every one of you who joined today, the company will donate USD 20 to ___.org through Deed as Social Impact matching.

[SB] is the Global Emergency Response Operations Manager at ___.org and specializes in worldwide emergency housing missions at the org. Today we’re excited for [I] from our Foreignairs leadership team to sit down with [SB] to learn more about the past and current efforts of ___.org and we will get some insights into the challenges and achievements they had on the short but impactful journey so far.

[I] Hello and thank you for the intro. I am [I] (she/her) and I work on the Regulatory Response team. I am also, together with [D], leading our Global Foreignairs group.

Interview Questions

1. Speaker Intro (5-7 minutes)

[I] (1) SB, can you tell us a little about yourself and why do you do what you do?

[S]talks about her journey with __.org

• Hi, I’m SB….. I am an expert in disaster housing operations, and I came to ____ from the US department of Urban Housing and Development, otherwise known as HUD. I previously held a presidential appointment as a Federal Coordinating Officer under Presidents Obama and Trump with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Managed several large scale disasters – Hurricane Maria and Irma in St. Thomas, VI and Hurricane Matthew in North Carolina. NYCHA,NYCEM, Florida/Georgia
• Now, I serve as the Global Emergency Response Manager for ___.org, which means I oversee our responses to natural disasters – hurricanes, flooding events, tornadoes. 

[I] (2) Thank you so much for sharing. I am sure on that journey you have encountered a lot of challenges, could you tell us about some of those challenges and how you were able to overcome them?

[S]

• Challenges navigating school. 
• Tutoring sessions – staring out the window at Millionaire’s Row – gorgeous old mansions. Believed that if you were “smart” you could live in a home like that. 
• Groundwork for believing that one’s home, the space one occupies is sacred. Is a fundamental part of life – and the various options are as unique and diverse as we are. Natural fit to come to a place that wants to help solve disaster housing challenges AND recognizes the beauty and vibrancy of diverse “homes” 

[I] (3) With those challenges in mind, is there a moment you would like to share that you are very proud of? 

[S]

•  Personal:  Hold Master’s – found a way through. 
• Professionally: referral program creation

2. Story of the Org (10-15 minutes) about 12:15 pm

[I] (4)We want to hear a bit more about the Org and how something that originated with a host’s idea became a non-profit organization?

[S]

• Why did ___ go from having it under their umbrella to moving it to a separate .org? 
• For over 8 years, ___ helped people in times of crisis through the Open Homes initiative. __.org was the  next chapter- a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with its own mission and board of directors.  As an independent nonprofit,  __.org leverages ___, Inc.’s technology, services and other resources, at no charge, to carry out ___.org’s charitable purpose. __, Inc. does not charge (Host or Guest) service fees for .org-supported stays on its platform.

[I] (5) It’s so great to know how much of an impact something that came from a host’s idea has had. Could you give us a quick highlight of some campaigns that the org has worked on in the past?

[S]

• In 2021, the team was heavily engaged with supporting displaced Afghan people. We also supported persons displaced by Hurricane Ida, wildfires in Colorado, flooding in New Zealand, and tornadoes that hit the central United States. 
• While our Partnerships team has existing relationships with international relief organizations who are engaged in resettlement work year round, we struggle on the emergency operations side to establish the level and volume of relationships we’d like. So, we typically leverage connections to local authorities who in turn advise us on who the trusted members of underserved communities are- including persons without a particular status or citizenship- and we strategize on ways to reach them.
• Highlight international & diverse causes
  • Internationally, we have helped support relief workers responding to crises in Haiti, New Zealand and Australia, along with the resettlement work that I noted above. 
  • Our disaster team has typically funded relief workers who are the first persons deploying to impacted areas to offer support- and to get us ground truth about what is happening. Are structures safe? Habitable? Are the areas where there are properties accessible? Is there clean water available? Is there a food source that people can access? Is the power on? These are really important questions we need answers to that inform our decision making as to what kind of support we can offer. 

3. Current focus (20 mins) about 12:30 pm

We want to talk about the current focus of the org, and how you operate.

[I] (6) We’re especially interested to know how, outside of providing accommodation, does __.org collaborate with other organizations to support people in crisis?

[S]

• As it relates to connecting people to resources outside of accommodation, I’ll share with you some work we did to support a First peoples community , the Choctaw Tribal Group in Louisiana, which is non-Federally recognized. Did not want to leave their home in the swamp area of the Bayou. Leveraged relationship with Amazon to get 10 generators delivered and installed as they remained w/o power for weeks after it was being returned to other areas. We look to honor all cultures and their desires/wishes. We believe in agency for those impacted. 

[I](7) I am sure not many people knew about these types of collaborations, so thank you for sharing. We know that many aid organizations have some limitations on who they can help. What are some of the implications for the support the org provides for, for example, legal or refugee status?

[S]

• __.org is able to support persons regardless of status. 
• This is important because it allows us to fully lean in to and embrace being a global entity, and carry out our message of belonging in a very real and tangible way. If there is an affirmed need or verified loss, and you cannot safely return to your home then we want to figure out how to get you a respite or relief in an ___ property. 

[I] (8) With so many causes and needs for support, how does the Org decide where to focus their assistance?

[S]

There are so many factors that go into determining where we can offer support in a meaningful way, and some of the practical Event Threshold Criteria include:

• 15,000+ displaced households or 5,000+ people in shelters (a previous example of a major event that would trigger this threshold is Hurricane Ida)
• 5,000+ property listings within a 1-hour radius
• Ability to prioritize __.org’s DEI goals within the displaced population
• Event occurs in an __.org established country such as the US, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand (to minimize additional operational barriers such as our ability to support the primary language of the impacted population).
• Strong existing govt relations and program awareness and/or a direct request for support from govt authorities
• Additionally, we need to ensure that our Customer Support Ambassadors have the capacity to assist displaced persons as they navigate the ___ system, in a trauma-informed way. 

[I] (9) What frameworks are in place to ensure the support the Org provides reflects Diversity and Equity and remains inclusive?

[S]

• We acknowledge and work against inherent power structures and historical oppressions that have created and perpetuated systemic barriers faced by those we intend to serve, and we see this exacerbated in immigrant communities across the globe. 

.org focuses our collective efforts on the following commitments:

• Centering our program and work on individuals from marginalized communities who have historically experienced limited access to resources as a result of social, cultural, economic and political oppression.
• We do this by asking partners to prioritize who they are referring to us- the lowest-income survivors who are unable to easily access the decent, stable, affordable housing they need to recover. We ask them to identify individuals and households from communities of color and/or geographic concentrations of poverty, persons, non-citizens, single earner households, persons on fixed income/financial insecurity, people with limited English proficiency, and those reliant on supportive programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) or another public benefit. 

In order to do so, we:

• Partner with entities that share our values and commitments to improve fairness, inclusivity.
• Invest in foundational research on diversity and equity in geographies where __.org operates to better understand the local contexts and nuances of marginalization.
• Explore the potential to embed equity-centered design methods into the foundation of our work through diversity of representation, co-created with communities.

We are committed to imagining new ways to transform the __.org stays product, program and team to align with the urgent call to center equity, deliver impact, and help create a world rooted in belonging and healing.

[I] (10) What is the current focus for the Org and what’s next?

[S]

• Speak to Ukraine Response and overarching challenges The current focus is the response to the Conflict in Ukraine. We have been able to leverage our formal existing partnerships with international organizations.  We’ve had great success launching a Rapid Response Tool that has allowed us to expedite the onboarding of organizations that we have formed new relationships with that are supporting displaced persons, and we’ve leveraged the Referral Program, which allows us to receive referrals from entities that we can trust to affirm displacement from Ukraine. We’ve housed over 50,000 people so far, and that is halfway to our commitment to house 100,000. 
• Our trusted entities share with us truly heartbreaking stories all the time. Just this morning, one shared the story of:  An 18 year old, gay, gender- nonconforming person who was studying medicine in Ukraine.
• He had some really bad experiences fleeing from Ukraine and is afraid of being outside and with people he does not know. This organization has pulled together funding to pay for his German language courses ( it is absurd that ‘real Ukrainians’ get German courses paid from the government and everybody else who fled the same War has to pay). And so the housing support that we provide via ___.org allows them to offset the costs of supporting them. 
• There were challenges with Africans and non-Ukrainian citizens receiving support that other populations could access. Early  on, Dupe was able to establish a relationship with Black Women for Black Lives that allowed us to support them in their goal to help house displaced Africans.  We partnered with another organization, Global Empowerment Mission (GEM), who also stood up an African Student housing program in Poland, and I’m pleased to be able to share a video with you of one of the Guests that .org housed.

• [I] We will now hear from Amina who was born in Nigeria and currently stays in the Netherlands. She is in her final year as a medical student from Lugansk State Medical University in Ukraine [OnAir video trigger]
• [PLAY AMINA VIDEO 0:56]

[S]

• Insight Ukraine – They are a Ukrainian organization brought to __.org by Dupé that is committed to equal rights, freedom, inclusiveness, and diversity for all social groups. “We are engaged in human rights and educational activities, and provide assistance and support to LGBTQI-people. Our organization brings together lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people.” To date, 8,346 people have booked stays via their participation in the Referral Program.
• Two important highlights of their work – Ensured that 136 transgender people were able to continue their hormonal treatment after fleeing Ukraine. And over 1000 persons provided in-depth mental health support.
• EURORDIS is a non-governmental patient-driven alliance of patient organizations representing 1000 rare disease patient organizations in 74 countries- the voice of 30 million people affected by rare diseases throughout Europe.
• Nova Ukraine – speak to their work – the largest trusted entity. Housed over 20,000 people to date. Offering support in the form of application assistance, food, basic supplies, etc.
  • Inform we’ll be playing video

[I] TRIGGER WARNING ANNOUNCEMENT

“TRIGGER WARNING – The following video we are about to watch contains images of war and violence.” [OnAir video trigger warning] 

• [PLAY NOVA UKRAINE VIDEO]

[S]

• What’s next  –  Deep work of Theory of Change, Org. Business as Usual. Hurricane Season underway, and continuing to do the work to meet our commitments to house displaced Ukrainian and Afghan people. 

4. Call for action (5 mins)  12:50 pm

[I] (11) How can WE get involved?

[S]

• Consider hosting. Share your cultural understanding- assist other hosts with cultural awareness.
• Sharing your own expertise and familiarity with Cultural orientations to prepare Hosts and immigrant Guests for Western culture in communities across the US.
• Consider Hosting an ___ Experience such as basic conversational English, hosting discussions about laws within Western culture. We are seeing particular interest from Afghan women in laws and cultural and gender norms. Questions about being safe and protections related to assaults, domestic violence, sexual assault. Questions about marriage, COVID vaccine hesitancy, US laws and responsibilities, and US Law Enforcement.
• Share recommendations on things Hosts can make available in their properties to celebrate immigrant culture – such as music playlist recommendations, some basic food or spices to stock in the kitchen, etc. 
• Spreading awareness within your community- encouraging people to host and recognize __.org as a trusted resource to help displaced people. 

Outro (2-3 mins)

[A] We would like to thank you, [SB], for taking time to give us such a great personal insight into __.org and the incredible work you and your team do to support people all over the globe. We would also like to thank [D] from the Org for her help to get this event off the ground as well as our D&B Manager accompanying us on this journey. Sabrina and your team, thank you for your constant comms support and J from our OnAir for supporting us with tech from San Francisco.

Last but not least, we want to thank our Foreignairs Leadership team, their managers for allowing them to put time and effort into this event, as well as our community, all of you who showed up today. 

A reminder that ___ is donating USD 20 for each one of you who attended today that will go to __.org and help them and the organizations they work with make a difference. The recording of the event will be available on AirTV for any of our team members who could not make it due to timezone or meeting constraints, so please feel free to share it with them.