Seattleites help Syrian refugees here and overseas

The 70-year-old jewelry maker from Bainbridge Island had been so moved upon reading about the refugees flooding there from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East that she decided she had to help, in person, the Seattle Times reported (http://bit.ly/23HP3Bb).

From here, supplies travel to the refugees, often as extra luggage carried by volunteers such as Olsen who have signed up with a bootstrap aid organization called Salaam Cultural Museum, in offices above the garage.

[...] a just-negotiated European Union deal meant Greece would be sending the boats back, and now Salaam had to decide whether to send volunteers to Lesbos anyway, in the event some refugees made it through, or to concentrate on a sprawling refugee camp near the Macedonian border.

[...] Olsen's uncertainty about her destination, which matched her haziness about what she would be doing when she got there.

Sam Hamoui, of Lake Stevens, quit a sales-consultant job at a company he had been with for 10 years to raise money and supplies for a refugee school in Turkey.

"There's been a remarkable outpouring of support," said Nicky Smith, executive director of the International Rescue Committee in Seattle, one of five agencies that work to resettle refugees locally.

[...] there are more people calling to help than there are Syrian refugees in the area, so Smith and her counterparts have been trying to redirect the goodwill toward refugees from other regions.

[...] dozens of U.S. governors — not to mention Donald Trump, with his call for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration — have argued that the United States should take in none at all while security remains a concern.

Day after day, the 65-year-old founder and president of Salaam sits at her desk, her Yorkie Omar Sharif at her side, furiously making arrangements for the teams of 15 to 20 people she has been sending to Greece on a weekly basis since September.

The calls were to contacts in Greece, and the firewood was for the refugees camped out in the border town of Idomeni, so desperate to keep warm amid the freezing rain that they have been burning plastic and old clothes.

Three staffers were also working the phones, trying to switch flights and book hotels as they phased out their Lesbos operation and concentrated on Idomeni.

Around them was a jumble of boxes filled with hand-knit hats and scarves, baby supplies and other things people had mailed or dropped off.

[...] the artifacts she collected have stayed in her home, and the Salaam Cultural Museum gradually morphed into a humanitarian organization.

Zawaideh said it started during the first Gulf War, in 1991, when she used tour buses to send donated medicine and other supplies into Iraq.

Sick or not, she was back at her desk, making calls about condos she wanted to rent there that could house pregnant women and new mothers.

[...] a 34-year-old dental assistant, she belongs to an informal network that steps in to fill the gaps left by resettlement agencies, which receive limited funding.

[...] they have been driving the family to the mosque and other outings, where they often interpret.