SAN DIEGO – Many advocacy groups and nonprofit organization in San Diego County are doing anything and everything they can to help those seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Recently, the County Border of Supervisors approved $3 million to help with those services, and local nonprofit SBCS was awarded the contract to manage the funding.
“The role of the partnership really is to take a look at the landscape of what all the partners are doing and really together come up with a plan on how we can align all of our services,” said Mauricio Torre, the Vice President of Program Operations for SBCS. “We are really looking at making sure that these individuals make it to their final destinations in a safe, efficient manner.”
And it’s distributing the funding out to those nonprofit partners for the efforts to support the asylum seekers.
In fact, SBCS told ABC 10News some of those contracts for things like food services have gone out Thursday.
“We’ve got Al Otro Lado that offers, you know, they have attorneys and they’re doing legal services for them. We’ve got Haitian Bridge Alliance that they also do; they provide a lot of services, really the case management,” Torre said. “Casa Familiar, of course. They’ve been a part of this from the very beginning. And what they’re doing on site is they’re doing the navigation.”
One of the resource site managers for SBCS told ABC 10News collaboration is key on finding the best use of these added county dollars. That way, they can maximize the funding that’s been provided to help these migrants struggling to get to their sponsors.
“We saw some folks that they were just trying really hard to try to get to next destination. But they were just struggling get the resources that they needed,” Jose Mireles, Program Manager at SBCS, said. “So, for us to ensure they moved along to their next step in their journey, we pivoted some of those resources also to support them with that travel.”
SBCS also told ABC 10News they also do rely on the community and donations to these asylum seekers. Things like hygiene kits with toothbrushes, toothpaste and translation services are a big help.
