Volunteer Application
Click on the Volunteer Application button to link to a secure site where you can complete and submit your application online.
In addition to completing the application form, a background check is required of all volunteers interacting with refugees. You will be given a Background Check Form at the Volunteer Training or emailed the form once we have received your application.
Note: Volunteers who are part of a church team will complete their background check through the church. Arrive Ministries will complete background checks for team leaders.
Please contact us with any questions. Thank you!
Volunteer Opportunities
Refugees resettled through Arrive Ministries and/or participating in our employment program encounter many obstacles during their first year in the U.S. Arrive Ministries’ New Neighbor Program seeks to empower members of the local church to respond to God’s persistent call to welcome the ‘stranger’ by connecting newly arrived refugee families to volunteers who provide the needed support during these critical moments in cultural adjustment. The goal of the New Neighbor Program is for refugees and volunteers to build relationships and participate in cultural exchange as the refugee families resettle in the Twin Cities. Through this process, refugees and volunteers come to see one another as neighbors instead of strangers. To be a neighbor, whether you are the refugee or the volunteer, is to be a friend, a cultural broker, a teacher, and a learner.
Small groups of 10 to 12 people come together to form friendships with a refugee family, just as New Neighbors do, but doing it alongside a group of people. Churches become part of God’s transformative work in the lives of their refugee friends, but find they are also transformed as they grow in relationship with the family they are connected with.
Help refugees seeking employment, working one-on-one to enhance client employability through professional development; basic computer, language, math, or other skills; helping with job searches and interview coaching.
Help new refugees learn English by becoming a Somali Adult Literacy Training (SALT) volunteer. Build friendship while helping students learn to communicate in English, possibly learning to read and write for the first time in their lives.
Your willingness to help our staff or other volunteers with your interpretive skills will enable newly arrived refugee families or individuals to receive needed support during critical moments in cultural adjustment.
The promotion of Arrive Ministries is as important to the functioning of the organization as working in the field. Arrive Ministries needs people who want to help make connections for the organization and spread the word of what we are doing online.
Short-Term Host Home Volunteer
Short-term hosts provide housing and some basic cultural orientation to refugee individuals and families for 1 to 14 days when we are unable to find housing right away.
Other: There are many unique and creative ways to serve the refugee community. If you have an idea not listed in our current volunteer opportunities that you would like to share, please contact us at mnvolunteers@arriveministries.org.