Sheila McGeehan Photo: Jackie Sahd/CWS-Lancaster
Not many people can claim to have resettled thousands upon thousands of refugees to their hometown – but Sheila McGeehan can.
Since she began her work with the Church World Service Immigration and Refugee Program (CWS/IRP) 25 years ago, she has introduced refugees from all around the world to Lancaster, Pa. – the “tranquil, prosperous, safe, pretty” city she loves.
In turn, newcomers from Russia, Vietnam, Sudan, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Burma, Bosnia, Iraq and numerous other countries have transformed this small city in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch Country into what McGeehan calls a “very cosmopolitan” community, population 55,000-plus.
“Now, in the newspaper almost every day, I see the name of someone we resettled – a birth or marriage announcement, an honors student, or a prominent community member – like the former ‘Lost Boy’ who is studying for the ordained ministry and sending money back to the Sudan to start a school.
“I don’t take credit. This is a great area for resettlement, and it would have happened without me,” said McGeehan, Director of the CWS/IRP Lancaster Office. “But it’s been very satisfying to contribute to making Lancaster more open and diverse.”
While McGeehan was growing up, most folks in Lancaster had German or Irish roots. It was unusual to meet someone from outside the United States, apart from Puerto Ricans who came to work in the farming industry and the occasional African or South American staff member of the Mennonite Central Committee in nearby Akron, Pa.
Somehow she still knew early on that she wanted to work internationally, perhaps in developing countries, perhaps in the Peace Corps. She completed a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, and a master’s degree at the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce at the University of Kentucky.
Along the way, she married a Lancaster man. So instead of heading overseas, she decided to stay put in Lancaster, and started studying the classified section of the Intelligencer Journal for job openings there.
“CWS’s Philadelphia refugee resettlement office was looking for someone to open a satellite office in Lancaster, an hour away,” McGeehan recalled. “I answered the ad, surprised to see something like that in Lancaster in the late 1980s.”
She got the job, and opened a one-person office in her home. After about a year, she moved the office to St. Andrew’s United Church of Christ. As it happened, soon thereafter the U.S. refugee program began admitting Pentecostals from Russia, sending a good number of them to Lancaster. Local Mennonite, Church of the Brethren and United Church of Christ congregations stepped forward to co-sponsor new arrivals.
“Rents here were lower and jobs more plentiful than in Philadelphia,” “McGeehan said. “Soon enough, we were bigger than the Philadelphia office.” Before long, CWS-Lancaster moved into its current space on King Street.
CWS-Lancaster has change a lot since its beginnings as a one-person satellite office. Today, a staff of 21 plus 130 volunteers and 14 student interns from Franklin and Marshall College and Millersville University implement an impressive list of programs that include not only refugee resettlement but also immigration legal services, employment programs, Matching Grant, and Cuban/Haitian resettlement.
An advocacy group has begun to meet regularly to encourage Congress to keep support strong for refugees, and the State of Pennsylvania to resist enacting anti-immigrant legislation. In addition, there are several special events each year – a World Refugee Day event, an annual fundraising breakfast in May and a benefit dinner in October.
McGeehan has had a hand in developing all those programs – and she’s not finished yet! Next on the list might well be working with a panoply of community partners to create a refugee center in Lancaster.
The idea was born at a March 30 conference [http://www.churchworldservice.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=13999&news_iv_ctrl=1361] cosponsored by CWS and Franklin and Marshall College that brought together 200 conferees to seek ways to make Lancaster even more welcoming to refugees than it already is.
“This wouldn’t be just CWS, but everyone, collaborating to offer services to refugees, whether they just arrived or have lived in Lancaster for years,” McGeehan said.
Of course, such a project will require significant planning and fundraising, but McGeehan’s dreams already are many – English classes, immigration legal services and “clinics” on special topics, mental health services, a business incubator, a place to find out about apartments for rent, an auditorium for meetings and cultural events, an agricultural project, programs for school-aged children and teens and their parents, and more.
Exclaimed McGeehan, “It’s nice that all this is happening in my 25th year!”