On a cool February afternoon, Angela Chang’s kitchen is filled with the smell of doro wot, an incredibly fragrant, spicy, flavorful, rich slow-cooked Ethiopian chicken stew mostly eaten for special occasions and family gatherings. Chang is surely making it for a special occasion, as a newly landed refugee mother just had an emergency c-section for the birth of her twins. How did Chang find herself making this dish for the first time?
Volunteering has always been an interest for Chang and finds it “necessary “for her and her family to be involved in the community she lives in. Before moving to the Pittsburgh area, Chang, her husband and her two young daughters would volunteer weekly at a local Butler synagogue, doing janitorial duties once a week.
“We’re not even Jewish, but I knew how important it was to help out the community, especially after the Tree of Life shooting,” Chang said. “I think that there is a lot you can learn about what is happening around you by helping what is around you.”
In 2018, Chang and her family packed up their lives and moved to the Whitehall area after her husband got a new job. Not familiar with Pittsburgh, she knew she wanted to get involved somehow, and that is where Hello Neighbor, a Pittsburgh based refugee assistance organization, comes in.
“I think some representatives from Hello Neighbor visited our church and just stressed the need for volunteers,” Chang said. “I would not have known that our area is crucial in helping refugees if it wasn’t for that visit and our volunteering with the group.”
Chang’s first experience with Hello Neighbor was preparing an apartment for an Afghanistan family’s first arrival in the United States. She also picked up this family from the airport and took them to their new home.
“It was in the middle of winter, and I just kept thinking it had to have been the family’s first time seeing snow,” Chang said. “It is really an amazing feeling to be a part of their story now forever, and I just came home feeling so good.”
This was just the start for Chang. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Hello Neighbor turned to Chang, a teacher who runs her own parent education business, for help in creating virtual schooling programs for the young refugees in their program.
“It was great to apply my knowledge and skills to a cause that is so close to me,” Chang said. “I helped a lot of adults with Chromebooks, been a reference for the back-to-school events and even help teach English.”
Chang admits that in these first few years with the organization that it was very “difficult.”
“I think I was too aggressive at first,” Chang said. “You want this experience to go so well because these people have been through so much, but there are going to be mistakes and communication barriers no matter how hard you try… Laughing is universal, and sometimes we just have to laugh.”
When meeting families and hearing more about their stories, Chang also admits that it is hard to hear.
“Secondary trauma is very real,” Chang said. “At the end of the day, we can only do so much. Seeing how thankful the people I come across for the smallest things is part of what keeps me going.”
After dipping her toes in Hello Neighbor, Chang decided it was time to take on something larger: mentoring a family, which included having meals once a week with a refugee family, helping them fill out paperwork from job applications to doctor’s appointments to addressing mail, and even taking them to appointments and areas around Pittsburgh. Through mentoring this family, Chang rode Pittsburgh’s public transit for the first time.
“In mentoring, you help the families get acclimated to the city, but being new to the city myself, I had not been on a public bus yet,” Chang said. “The mom wanted to go to the Strip District and get some ethnic groceries; she was much better at navigating the bus stops than me.”
Now, as her kids are getting older, Chang is mainly involved in making meals about once a month for moms in the Smart Start program and mentoring moms one-on-one.
Chang delivers a home cooked meal to a new refugee mom at Magee Women’s Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pa. on February 11, 2023. Chang said that volunteering through Hello Neighbor for new refugees makes her feel connected to her community.
“There is a soon-to-be mom I am mentoring right now that I am just so inspired by,” Chang said. “She just completed her GED and is looking to study computer science at the Community College of Allegheny County.”
Chang has no plans to stop volunteering any time soon.
“Once you get started with Hello Neighbor, it’s hard to stop,” Chang said. “I plan to help as long as I can because I love to help and know what is going on around me.”
