 Look, let me say good morning to everyone, and today I'm joined by the following leaders from the Houston Afghan Resettlement Fund, also known as HAARP, Cynthia Colbert, President and CEO of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston, Houston, Daniel Stoker, President and CEO of the Alliance, Martin B. Kaminski, President and CEO of Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston, and Stephen Ives, President and CEO of the YMCA of Greater Houston. Let me thank you all. I also want to acknowledge representatives from the Kinder Foundation, Houston Endowment, the Ting Sun and Wayfarm Child Foundation, HAARP staff members and members from my office of New Americans and immigrant communities. In the past several months, over 2,500 Afghan refugees have been brought to our region in the wake of the sudden Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. As the most internationally diverse city in the country, Houston has had a long history of being a welcoming city for refugees, and we are very proud of that. Over a quarter of our population was born in another country, and more than 145 different languages are spoken in our many neighborhoods. Many of our faith traditions teach us to be hospitable to others and welcome and treat them as we would like to be treated ourselves. Houston is an example of what a welcoming city should be, and today is no exception. I want to take this time to personally welcome all the Afghan refugees who have recently resettled to the city of Houston. Houston is proudly leading the charge in Texas for its response to welcoming Afghan refugees, and this is thanks to the hard work of the organizations led by the leaders who are standing beside me today. But frankly, let me just say, I don't think any city, any place in the country does this work better than the organizations who are standing with me today. And they do it because they work collaboratively to make it happen. Texas resettles more people than any other state in the country, and Houston is leading the way in doing it well, doing it well and making people feel warm. So I want to thank these organizations for taking the lead. It's not the mayor, but these organizations that have really stepped up. And for that, I want to personally thank each and every one of you. Today, you will hear from the four CEOs, from the reselling agencies who will share important updates and announce new generous donations to the fund. Since the very beginning, they came together and started planning on how they would receive our Afghan allies. They began the Houston Afghan Resettlement Fund to help raise money for those who may lack the resources they would need to relocate their families. They also did an outstanding job at working with me in my office of New Americans, Terrence O'Neill, to make sure the city was always informed of their efforts and all of their activities. And just last week, I had the pleasure of joining in responding to the former governor of Delaware and newly appointed White House coordinator for operations allies, welcome Jack Markell to Houston. Governor Markell praised Huff efforts and applauded our city's collaborative response to welcoming Afghan refugees. I will now let me now invite Cynthia Colbert, President and CEO of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Galveston, Houston, who will share more about these efforts. Cynthia will be followed by Daniel Stoker, President and CEO of the Alliance, who will be followed by Martin B. Kamensky, President and CEO of Interface Ministries for Greater Houston. And then Mr. Kamensky will be followed by Steven Ives, President and CEO of YMCA of Greater Houston. Cynthia. First of all, on behalf of the Houston Afghan Resettlement Fund and our collaboration, I'd like to thank our mayor for leading the way and creating such a welcoming city and a place where Afghans and other immigrants and refugees want to live and are welcomed into a city where they can thrive and rebuild their lives after such a traumatic. So thank you, Mary, because without your leadership, we wouldn't be the kind of city that says we have open arms and we're ready for you to rebuild your life here in the Houston region. So for over two decades, Afghans worked alongside our troops, our diplomats, and other government employees as interpreters, cultural advisors, drivers, and many more functions. With the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, tens of thousands of our Afghan allies and their families became targets in grave danger of retaliation. When the withdrawal began, our agencies realized that our services would be needed now more than ever. We knew that Houston would be a popular place for a large percentage of fleeing Afghanis. And we knew it would require all of us working together to join forces and provide resources to help them. Our four agencies have a lot of history and experience and expertise in providing help for families who are rebuilding their lives from the ground up. So when our Afghan allies fled from their homeland, let me tell you, they left with nothing, just whatever they could carry in the clothes on their back. So when they arrive here in Houston, we work to provide them with a range of supports that help them truly begin to rebuild their lives. This means that we begin the journey by welcoming them at the airport, a friendly face, a welcoming staff member and volunteer who then drive them either to temporary housing or to their apartment. When we greet them, we make sure that they have food to eat and they understand that we're there to journey along with them in this resettlement effort. Once we get them settled in their temporary housing, then we work to get them placed in permanent housing and we furnish the apartment and stock the pantry with culturally appropriate foods so that they don't walk into an unwelcoming place. We provide ongoing support for six months or more to help them find jobs, get their kids in schools, obtain medical care, and all of the other supports that we all need to lead our lives. But we know it's a challenging transition. Later, you'll hear from one of our Afghan staff members. His name is Matthew Abid. He works for Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement Program. He's been doing a lot of work with the 24 Afghan families who were evacuated by the New York Times and who are now served by Catholic Charities. Afghan evacuees and refugees are known for quickly becoming self-sufficient. Let me tell you, they all want to work. That was one of the first questions. When can our kids go to school and when can we work? So they want to find jobs as soon as possible so they can provide for their families. Between our four agencies, we expect to receive more than 6,000 Afghans in all, probably by early next year. We're not quite halfway there. Right now, our four agencies have received about 2,500 Afghans. So about half of those are families, but we're also getting a lot of single adults as well. Our history in refugee resettlement, our collective experience and expertise, means that when we come together, we know how to leverage our resources, our knowledge, and community resources to help those with whom we are called to serve. In September, we knew that it would be more than any one agency could do by herself, so we formed the Houston Afghan Resettlement Fund and Collaboration. So we set up a website to give the public a place where they could easily make a donation, HoustonAfghanHelp.org. Catholic Charities is the fiscal agent and together we are raising funds to help our new Afghan neighbors. We calculated that the need would be about $8 million to cover costs that were not eligible for federal funding at that time. To date, I'm very happy to let you know that we have received $5.3 million in donations and pledges to help our new Afghan neighbors. Two extraordinary support though came in from the Kinder Foundation and Houston Endowment. They each gave $1.5 million to help us on our goal towards the $8 million. We're so grateful that these two Houston institutions modeled the way in meeting critical needs for Afghan families. We'll share more information about other generous donors who stepped up to welcome these newcomers into our community. So for now, I'll turn the podium over to my colleague, Daniel Stoker, from the Alliance. Thank you, Cynthia. Thank you, Mayor Turner, for your leadership. The Alliance is a nonprofit organization that has served the greater Houston area for more than 35 years and has a long history of resettlement. Our mission is to create opportunities for immigrants, refugees, and underserved communities to achieve their goals for self-sufficiency and improve their quality of life through a number of comprehensive support and service programs. We're incredibly proud to be part of this collaborative effort to resettle Afghan allies who supported US military operations in Afghanistan and will now be calling Houston home. The Alliance has already welcomed nearly 500 allies and we expect to resettle a total of over 1400 ourselves. You heard the numbers for the full collaborative here. The families we're helping have arrived with nothing but clothes on their backs. They're going to need our full support to rebuild their lives here in Houston. In September, Congress took an important step to expand the resources available to the Afghan evacuees. As part of the fiscal year 2020 continuing resolution, Congress approved a measure that provides Afghan evacuees full access to resettlement benefits including reception and placement services and public benefits such as food assistance and medical care. Just last Friday, also, Congress and the Biden administration took a step further in supporting our Afghan allies being including a 1.3 billion to the stop-get funding bill that will go towards providing resettlement and other support services such as housing, English language classes, job training and case management for arriving Afghans. These were significant policy changes that will provide much needed resources to the Afghan families but there is still major funding gaps that need to be addressed just as there always is for refugees. Federal funding for these programs are currently provided through reimbursement also but we have a lot of people coming in. There's a lot of reimbursements. That means right now local organizations such as ours are bearing the upfront costs to secure housing, food, medical care and other essential services that the Afghan families need when they get here. Our organizations are also bringing on new staff members to serve these families and many money that are arriving each day now. The collaborative recently sent a letter to our local members of Congress urging them to expedite federal funds through advanced payments so that local organizations such as all of ours have full capacity to effectively meet the urgent and growing needs of these families. We look forward to working with our members of Congress to get these federal funds dispersed quickly. At the same time, we know from experience that this effort can only be successful with strong support from the community. Our history here has proven that. Refugee resettlement has always been a private public partnership. We have long-continent support from our corporate partners, faith-based organizations, other non-profit partners and generous community members. And that includes cash donations and donated services, food and vehicles. We're very grateful to all of those who have already provided support, which you'll heard about and you'll be hearing more about here in a moment, including these foundations and corporations that we're going to additionally recognize. Houstonians are known for helping their neighbors in times of crisis. We ask for your support now to give our new Afghan neighbors the opportunities to recover and rebuild their lives here in Houston. Thank you. Martin Kaminski. Thank you. Good morning. I'm Martin Kaminski, the president and CEO of Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston. And we're one of the four agencies that are working so closely together in a collaboration that was made possible by private funders who saw the need to help, to help immediately, and to bring us all together. And so we have developed wonderful relationships together, sharing in resources, each complimenting the other and the work that we do. One of, or two of the things that Interfaith Ministries specializes in is youth mentorship and the opportunity to help the young people that are coming from Afghanistan. We also work in the women's empowerment area to help the women in the family realize their new opportunities in America and utilize those to the fullest. But I'm particularly proud to talk to you today about the funding that made our collaboration possible. The government is always there, and we thank Mayor Turner for always supporting the work of making our community as diverse, as productive and fruitful as possible. And to him, we always say thank you and to other government leaders. But the private sector has the opportunity to come in and to bridge the gap and to be there at times when the government can't be there and to be there faster than the government might be able to get there. And so it's with incredible appreciation that I thank two leading funders of our effort. They've been mentioned before, but it bears repeating. The Kinder Foundation, represented by Petra, Bran and Isaac, we're so grateful. And to the Houston Endowment, represented by Meghna Ghaswami, these two individuals came together first and said, let's make it happen. They challenged each other and helped us slay the foundation of a $3 million gift that would get us started in this effort. But their inspiration and their efforts inspired others. And so I'm particularly happy to recognize some other major foundations and corporations who are helping us along the way. The Ting Seng and Wei Fong Chow Foundation has made a gift of $320,000 to our fund. And Carolyn Sabat and MJ Munez are here today. We thank you for that. The New York Times has given a $250,000 gift to support our work of the collaboration and as we work to resettle people from their staff that were in Afghanistan. I'm happy to say that their staff is now safely resettled here in Houston. I'm also pleased to recognize Kyle Washington, thank you, Kyle, from PepsiCo Foundation, who gave a $50,000 effort to support our work. And our final major gift is from the Arnold Ventures for $50,000. That's a sum of about $3.7 million that's in the bank and raised. But I'm glad to hear from Catholic Charities, who serves as our fiduciary, that Moore is on the way, that pledges are being made, and we have tremendous support. Just always a reminder that in Houston, we do things together. And the public-private partnership working under the leadership of the mayor and the very generous citizens and foundations and companies really makes the difference. And I also want to thank the Houses of Worship and business communities who are doing very special things, donating food, donating hotel rooms to help us get folks settled, and to Houses of Worship that are adopting families and trying to support them as they become Houstonians in our city. So I encourage anyone who can to please help and to please make possible the opportunity for the best life for our new neighbors. Thank you. And I'll call upon my colleague, Stephen Ives. Hello, I'm Stephen Ives, president and CEO of the YMCA of Greater Houston. And I just want to share that like from the mid-1800s, when YMCA first started to be formed here in the United States, YMCA's in big cities were committed to and engaged in strengthening the foundation of community by welcoming people, welcoming newcomers. Houston is no exception. In fact, a leader in this country amongst the Y movement in work with welcoming new Americans, but more importantly, and specifically around refugee resettlement. In the 70s, our YMCA became a partner with some of these others in handling the needs of new people coming to our country for various reasons. In the last few weeks and months that the four of us have been spending time together, a dream of mine has begun to come true. And that is a dream of being able to work hand in hand with other organizations, not just as partners and collaborators, but with this thing I call collective impact. What that means is that we're going to settle 6,000 Afghans. The YMCA will do 1,500 or so, but we're not responsible for 1,500. We're responsible for 6,000. And I think all four of us are thinking of it that way. And so when you imagine coming to this country in the circumstances that have been described to you with only what you can carry in your hands, stranger in a strange land, coming from some trauma and some discomfort, and trying to navigate the workings of the United States. So how many of you had a hard time finding parking for City Hall, who last went and registered their car and saw what was required in order to get through that? People coming to this country without our experience and capabilities are going to need to navigate many of those same things. And so as they walk out of the airplane into the airport and see welcoming people, that's a start. But the bigger piece for this is going to be they're gonna see agencies working together, not passing the buck, not sending one to another because we don't have that. Everybody taking responsibility for all 6,000 Afghans or more that are gonna come to our city. So I couldn't be prouder to be part of this with our collaboration here and really inspired by the philanthropy and the philanthropic input of these wonderful generous donors. Houston is leading the nation, not just Texas, in resettling Afghans. This is an important issue for our communities, is important issue for our country, and it means the world to those people that are coming to us, many of whom have done amazing and heroic things on behalf of a mission that mattered to us as Americans. So with that, I'd like to thank our donors again, thank my partners for being in this with us. It's some early morning calls, it's some late evening calls, it's time and energy related to creating that collective impact that at the end of the day will create and is creating a different experience for people coming to this country. Let's just remember what they're coming here for and also what they have with them when they get here. And remember that Houston's a special place. Houston's a special place because of who we are and our culture, but also because of the leadership that is here in the agency's historic leadership of collaboration and caring for the community and a great mayor who really gets it and understands it and encourages us and really tells us he's proud of us, but also continues to encourage us to move forward. So with that, I will welcome Mayor Turner back up to the podium to introduce our local Afghan. Thank you, thank you all. Thank you, Cynthia, Daniel, Martin, Stephen, thank you and thank you for your comments. No city could be more fortunate to have a group here committed leaders who have shown so much passion and dedication to helping and welcoming others. I would now like to introduce Matthew Abib, an Afghan special immigrant visa staff member from one of the Huff agencies. Matthew will share his six year journey as an Afghan translator with the United States Marine and his experience reselling parolees in Houston. Matthew. Good morning. My name is Matthew Abib and I'm one of the Afghan refugees who moved to the city of Houston about nine years ago. I moved here because I worked with the United States Marines for about six years in the southern part of Afghanistan, Himman province, many of you may have heard that. And then after working for some time, I was giving the option to apply for the special immigration visa, which is particularly for the Afghans who work alongside the U.S. in the Iraqi as well. So I said, yeah, why not? I'd be happy to go and move to the U.S. And then I was in search of a place where to move in the United States. So I asked my friends, the Army and the Marines, what is the best place for the newcomers that they can resell easily and get away and try to resell. And they say, a lot of them say, you know, Houston, some of them say California. But when I counted, Houston was at the top of the list. So I said, I'm moving to Houston. And so that's why I decided. And that's why a lot of these Afghan refugees, they come into Houston because of the diversity we have because of the culture and because of the way that a lot of them can find a job. Even if you don't speak English, you can still find a job and you have a lot of courses, a lot of facilities for the refugees. So that's why most of them come into Houston. So when I moved to the United States, I had a couple of hundred dollars in my pocket. So I say, like, it was gonna be hard for me to carry on the life. But fortunately, you know, I was able to get a job within the first 30 days since when I moved. And then I was on my own, you know, by car. And then later on I went to the, I started working with the, one of my first jobs was a gas station actually. So I was making barely minimum wages, like 725. I started there. And then I moved to a pizza store as a system manager. And then later on, you know, I jump up started working with one of the property as a leasing agent. And then I decided, you know, I said, I don't think this is gonna work. So I need to make more money. And then I went to college. So I started Houston Community College, studied that for two years. I studied criminal justice, but, and then after finishing the community college, I think COVID came. So COVID-19 started and I was struggling to find a job. I was everybody else. So I was staying home for the whole year of 2020. And then 2021, I started with the Catholic Charities as a cash manager. And here I am. So I'm trying to help as much as I can because I was one of them. You know, I've been to it. I came here with a couple hundred dollars in my pocket. And most of them are the same, you know, they have the same issue or the same case. They're not even having the proper, what is it, clothes. I mean, most of them just left the home with nothing, not even the bag. I mean, when they come to the airport, they have blue bag that was given to them in Washington, D.C. So most of them not even having like backpack, even over the regular bag. So, and now, you know, I'm happy to help them. And I thank everybody else, all these, you know, Mayor. I know they've been doing a lot of hard work getting midnight calls and all those things. I'm one of them. I get a lot of calls, but I'm happy to help. And thank you so much. And I'll thank the city of Houston for helping the Afghan allies that are coming because they know this is a home and this is the best place they can resettle. Thank you. Let me thank Matthew for sharing his story and the powerful story it is and for your commitment to ensuring that our Afghan refugee families have a smooth resettlement transition. And I'm glad to have you be a Houstonian and hey, I am your mayor, okay? So, look, before closing, I want to acknowledge and give thanks to the Kender Foundation again and the Houston Endowment again for their generous donation of $1.5 million each. A heartfelt thanks also goes out to the Ting Song and Wei Fang Chow Foundation, the New York Times, the Arnold Ventures and the PepsiCo Foundation. And please know that your donations are helping people, helping propel the efforts that are needed for our Afghan refugee families. In closing, I want to encourage all Houstonians to do your part to support these organizations and their work to help our new allies resettle in their new homes. The season of giving is upon us and I ask all Houstonians to open their hearts and donate to the Houston Afghan Resettlement Fund. You can donate by visiting houstonafghanhelp.org. That's houstonafghanhelp.org. And sometimes, many times, the most important gift is not under the Christmas tree. The most important gift are the people who are walking beside you, your neighbors, your friends. No one person organization can do it alone. We must do it together because as you have heard all of us say over the years, we're all in this together. And whether you're a native born or foreign born, our destinies as a people are intertwined and our future as a city will depend on how we respond to these challenges. So thank you again to the organizations and leaders who are present and thank you for the work that you do. We look forward to working with you to make Houston a more welcoming city for our Afghan allies. So having said that, are there any questions that you may? No questions, we're just gonna do a photo op. Okay.