Placement Profile: Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service

Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) joined LVC as a Placement partner in 2021, and is already a top choice for applicants with immigration mission and career interests. Kristin Witte, director of outreach, shared thoughts on the impact she hopes will blossom from the new relationships with LVC.

  • LVC: Why did you join as an LVC placement? 

Witte: We joined LVC as a placement because we know how impactful and formative a program like this is firsthand! Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service’s VP of Development and Outreach, Andrew Steele, and all of the LIRS Outreach team, were participants in an organized service program after college. We can all name our time doing service as critical to our discernment around how we wanted to use our gifts and shaping the trajectory of who we became in the future. If we can be a part of someone’s journey, and in return we can receive the blessing of a talented young adult, it is a blessing we could not pass up. 

  • LVC: How do you think a Volunteer will help? 

Witte: Every time someone new enters our team, we are given the opportunity to reinvent ourselves and include that person’s gifts and creative ideas into the work we are doing.  The volunteer that will be placed at LIRS will serve as a project manager – expanding their leadership role, understanding the work of LIRS with migrants and refugees, and learning about non-profit organizations. In all of these places, their unique perspective can shape and inform how we live out the mission of LIRS. 

  • LVC: What is something exciting that you are working on that is important for LIRS’s mission?

Witte: Right now, LIRS is responding with absolutely everything we have to significant changes in the number of Unaccompanied Migrant Children at the border and the pending change in the Presidential Determination for Refugees. This means that every day is a new project, a new opportunity to educate and do interfaith coalition building. We are currently working on resources and programs around World Refugee Day as well as an educational resource for the fall for deepening cultural understanding with the focus on the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Want to learn more about LIRS’s activities with immigration? Visit them HERE for a fuller story.