A $25,000 grant that was awarded to Lansing’s Refugee Development Center (RDC) allowed the center to improve its infrastructure and increase its capacity to help 
area residents.
“What happened with the Refugee Development Center is that all of the programs and volunteer and clients we have been seeing have outpaced our ability to keep up with them,” says Shirin Kambin with the RDC.
The Capital region's Power of We consortium provided a $25,000 grant to the center to update its lab, renovate a portion of its interior and buy more educational materials for the students.
“In the computer lab, we have 70 kids in an after school program and probably 45 to 50 a night who come to the center,” says Kambin.
Before updating the lab, the RDC’s clients had access to roughly five working computers every day. Now they have 10 working computers and a screen for the overhead projector. Volunteers also helped paint and rehab the interior space.
“We worked with the space we already had, but we enhanced it and made it more grounded in the services we were already providing,” says Kambin. “We’re hoping to make it more of a learning center.”
The RDC is inside of Christ Lutheran Church in Lansing. Since first opening, the RDC has expanded beyond the second floor of the church into the basement.
Source: Shirin Kambin, Refugee Development Center
Ivy Hughes, development news editor, can be reached here.
Photographs © Dave Trumpie
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