Miami Airport, October 24, 2024. The Miami Shenandoah sponsor group wait for the family to arrive. Pictured from left to right: Dalia Azoulai, Teya Collins, Yasmeen Azoulai, Erin Lewis, Jonathan “Yoni” Azoulai, Mariana Khawand-Azoulai, Raymond Caram, Alex Venot
For Miami Emergency Room Doctor Jonathan “Yoni” Azoulai, sponsoring refugee families and providing them with a safe path to life in the United States is just common sense.
“Why is there so much noise around these topics? When you drill down to it, I have not met a single person who’s like, ‘That’s not good. You shouldn’t be helping a refugee family.’ For all the rhetoric I hear on TV, not once has anyone not said, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’ Everyone has been incredibly supportive,” Yoni shared.
As a person of Moroccan, Jewish, and Eastern European heritage, Yoni explains that in his family, “there is a long history of running.” Through his family’s stories of displacement in the 1950s, Yoni came to understand the importance of supporting one’s community and opening doors to a future of possibilities.
In a world full of challenges, Yoni believes focusing on small but powerful acts of support can have a significant impact.
“If you save the life of one person, or make life better for one person, or help them achieve their potential, you’ve changed the entire world,” he said. “You’ve changed the entire world for that person.”
“A hundred times yes”
Yoni first learned about the Welcome Corps on CNN, and at the time, he said the process of welcoming felt complicated. However, once Yoni saw U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speak about the Welcome Corps, the process seemed simple.
“In a very heartfelt way, I was like wow, yes, yes, a hundred times yes.” Yoni was ready to join thousands of Americans like him across the country who have stepped up to welcome refugees.
That’s when the Miami Shenandoah sponsor group was formed. For Yoni, the process was as “simple as getting five people to fill out a form together.” In fact, once Yoni and his colleagues and friends started talking about the program, they had more names than there was space for on the application.
The Miami Shenandoah group first welcomed a couple from Colombia and Venezuela in 2023. In fall 2024, they welcomed a second family, this time a Syrian family—a couple and their two children: a five-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter.
Yoni explained that we can never know what possibilities will come from creating opportunity.
“The other night I even had a dream,” Yoni shared, “where I saw the name of one of the children we are sponsoring on a medical school application I was reviewing at work.” However, as Yoni clarified, the role of the sponsor is not to shape the whole story—it’s to open a pathway.
“It’s not that I have dreams for him,” Yoni said of the son in the family his group recently welcomed. “It’s that I hope he has that kind of opportunity, if that’s what he wishes.”
Learning to navigate life in America
Welcome Corps sponsors help families transition to life in the United States by finding housing, employment, and social connections in their new community. The process of transition is not easy, but according to Yoni and other sponsors, the rewards of helping families build a new life make the effort worthwhile. When times got hard, or when the families faced challenges securing funding or housing, Yoni reminded himself and others of the ‘90% rule’: “90% of the good is already done just by the families being here. Maybe there will be challenges, but they are here, and that means 90% of the good is done,” he explained.
By welcoming refugee families, Yoni and his sponsor group gained a broader understanding of how different systems and services operate in the United States, enhancing their awareness of available resources for refugees and other members of their community. This knowledge also strengthened Yoni’s ability to connect with his patients, offering more empathetic support based on shared experiences.
“We have an opportunity to take someone whose human capital would probably have been wasted, or at least not realize its full potential, and bring them here and have them contribute to society in an amazing way.”
Yoni, Welcome Corps sponsor
After accompanying the family to the Social Security Office for the first time, Yoni shared, “It was a wonderful thing. I work in the emergency department at our main public hospital down here. So, I now share something with my patients when they say, ‘I went to this place, and this was what happened.’ I can relate, ‘Oh, yeah, I’ve been there.’”
As Welcome Corps sponsors, Yoni and his family became more attuned to the realities refugees face and the importance of addressing common misconceptions about immigrants and refugees. Instead, he wants people to think of welcoming as an investment in their country’s future.
“We have an opportunity to take someone whose human capital would probably have been wasted, or at least not realize its full potential, and bring them here and have them contribute to society in an amazing way.”
The junior Welcome Corps
Yoni’s philosophy as a parent is that acts of kindness should be taught by example.
As Yoni described the role that his sponsor group played in welcoming their Syrian family, he emphasized how his children contribute to the group’s welcoming efforts.
“The kids have been involved the whole time. We even have a junior Welcome Corps group where they make little membership cards for themselves and make welcome posters that they would take to the airport with us to welcome [the families].”
As the Miami Shenandoah Welcome Corps group fundraised to welcome their first family, the junior Welcome Corps group made lemonade and organized a garage sale to help with fundraising. Through these experiences, Yoni explained that his kids and other children of his fellow group members are also learning from the sponsor experience.
“When you have a chance to show your kids good deeds, I think it does more than telling them about good deeds or reading about them in a book,” he explained. Indeed, Yoni and the Miami Shenandoah sponsor group consistently show kids in their community the power of coming together and doing your part to welcome others.
A community effort
Along the journey, Yoni noted that many individuals and companies have helped his sponsorship efforts go smoothly. For example, Yoni credits Airbnb.org for offering Welcome Corps sponsors with one month of housing credits.
“In a way,” Yoni said, “Airbnb has been our biggest sponsor for both families,” specifically by providing a safe and comfortable space for the families to live in when they first arrive.
After the first month, Yoni and his group members reached out to their community networks to secure longer-term housing. From there, everything started falling into place.
Having successfully completed their sponsorship of the first family from Colombia and Venezuela, Yoni’s group is now midway through sponsoring a Syrian family. With the experience gained from their first journey, they are applying new insights and lessons as they help the second family settle into their new life.
“All you need is five… Five people who are willing to do this together.”
Yoni, Welcome Corps sponsor
These days, Yoni enjoys Arabic coffee during his visits to the newly arrived Syrian family at their place, where they share updates about their lives. On weekends, the kids from both families play together at the park—even if they don’t yet speak the same language.
Yoni and the father of the Syrian family help each other learn English and Arabic on Duolingo, sitting side by side and laughing as they point to the correct answer on each other’s phone screen.
“All you need is five,” Yoni said. “Five people who are willing to do this together.”