By Mary Jo Blackwood, American Red Cross of Colorado and Wyoming Public Affairs
The American Red Cross helps reconnect families separated internationally by war, disaster, migration and other humanitarian emergencies. Restoring Family Links (RFL), a division of International Services, provides free and confidential services to help families reconnect, provided the family member seeking assistance can provide enough information to initiate the search. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), along with the wider Red Cross and Red Crescent network, jointly runs Restoring Family Links.
Requests can be accepted from family members who were in contact before the emergency situation separated them, even if it was decades before. And it works. Every day, the Red Cross Red Crescent Movement helps reunite on average 12 missing people with their families.
Over the years, some of the stories have been heartwarming.
Cuba
A young woman came to the United States in 1980 during the mass emigration known as the Mariel boatlift. At first, as she settled into Northern Florida, she was able to maintain regular correspondence with her family back home. But then, her mother fell ill and she lost communication with her sister, the only other remaining family member in Cuba.
She provided Red Cross caseworkers with information about her mother and sent a Red Cross Message, asking if she was okay and to please contact her. The American Red Cross sent the inquiry on to the Cuban Red Cross, and the search began. Two months later, the RFL caseworkers had a reply message from her mother. Since their last communication, her mother had been placed in a nursing home, and her sister had moved to another city in Cuba and had lost the contact information. Now they speak on a weekly basis, all of them grateful for the Red Cross’s help.
Child Migration
Each year, thousands of unaccompanied minors cross the southern US border. One such minor, a boy who was smuggled into the US, had lost his backpack containing contact information for his family members both in the US and back home in Honduras. A Red Cross caseworker in Chicago where the boy had ended up in a detention center, assisted RFL caseworkers working with the Honduran Red Cross to locate the boy’s mother. When they did, she was able to put him in touch with relatives in the US who could act as his sponsor so that he could be released from the detention center.
Africa:
Local Red Cross of Colorado workers connected a Colorado mother with her daughter in Uganda after they had not communicated for over ten years. They became separated when they fled the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to escape a violent conflict. The father, brother, and all but one sister were killed one night in that heated civil war. The mother and sister made it to the US, eventually making Colorado their new home, while the other daughter got to Uganda.
A doctor, volunteering with a small non-governmental organization in Uganda met the daughter, and because the volunteer doctor was also volunteering with RFL in another state, she stayed in touch with the daughter, who had enough information on her mother and sister that they could be traced. The RFL trace led to Colorado, where the mother had resettled. The mother, who thought her daughter was dead, was overjoyed to finally talk to her and find out about her life.
Another Colorado Connection
In the fall of 2021, a sister sent a message through the Tanzania Red Cross Society in search of a brother she has not seen in over 14 years. The letter slowly found its way through the Red Cross Restoring Family Links program before it landed in our CO/WY region. Over the holidays, RFL Lead Volunteer, Matt Piscopo, tracked the case and successfully contacted her brother, a Colorado Springs resident.
RFL client, Mando Ndereyimana, was born in 1972 in Burundi (East Africa). When war broke out in Burundi, his family moved to Rwanda, where they lived for over 20 years. It wasn’t easy. There was no food and no safety. He had one set of clothes and sometimes he didn’t eat for three days.
Then, when the Rwanda genocides began in the 1990s, his family moved to Tanzania. He lived there for another 12 years and started his own family. Life continued to be unstable in Africa. With the help of aid societies and Lutheran Services, he moved to the United States with his wife, three children, and two brothers. He and his wife had a fourth child here in the US and have made Colorado home for the last 14 years. His adult kids are now married, and Mando now has three grandchildren.
The RFT letter Mando received from his older sister, reestablished communication from a sibling he has not seen for the last 14 years. That sister still lives in Tanzania He still has two younger sisters living in Burundi he has not yet contacted.
Mando was all smiles when he read the letter from his sister. With that contact, he was able to send a reply to be sent back through the Restoring Family Links database. He says he is so happy to be reconnected with his sister and hopes to be able to sponsor her and her family to join him in the US. He is very grateful to finally be safe and happy in this country.
If you know someone who has lost touch with family across the miles and across distance, check out the Red Cross’s Restoring Family Links website.