Robin loves the bunny I gave her some months ago, and watching her grow, I think of how important it is for me to offer a helping hand to the refugee children, some no older than Robin, coming to America while they still can.

This week, a new chapter for me, and also for Maria. We are getting closer to offering additional support to these families, many of whom have come to this area. Today and Sunday we are going to Albany to meet with volunteer officials and learn just what kind of help we can offer.

In recent months, the volunteer programs have become more guarded and restrictive. And protective.

There are also lots more volunteers. People care about them and welcome them.

Some of the refugees are planning an art show in Albany later this month, that might be a good way for Maria and I to plunge in and help. There are also mentoring, support and literacy programs, that’s another possibility.

I want to meet and photograph some of the refugees and show them to be loving and hard-working human beings and family members, not monsters or deadbeats or terrorists. They are working, they are contributing, they are not sucking our resources up.

Showing this is the tricky part, as people are afraid to be photographed or talk openly, something I have rarely seen before in America but is dangerous in their home countries. Pictures can be powerful.

I think the best contribution to the refugees lives that I can make is to show them as human beings, as has happened at the Mansion Assisted Care Facility. These are not nameless and faceless elderly people, they are Connie and Peggie and Madeline and Jean and Sylvie and Brother Pet.

That makes all the difference. Maria will figure out what she can do, how she will help. One thing all of us can do often and very inexpensively is visit the Amazon Refugee Gift Page , set up by the U.S. Committee On Refugees And Immigration.

The refugee children are frightened and overwhelmed.

They are tired and lonely.

The gift page offers a Stress Relief Coloring Book for $4.99. It also offers many other inexpensive things.

I bought several and donated them, all you have to do is click on the USCRI Refugee Warehouse as a destination. I think about Robin, my first granddaughter, and who might care about her if she found herself in a strange country and her parents had lost everything.

I hope people would reach out to her and send blankets and socks and toys.

Compassion is my faith and political ideology, that is my platform. I don’t care about the left and the right and their shrinking minds and visions. We are not free if we only have two choices to make about how we think,  I think we all learned that last year.

I’ll share my experience in engagement with the refugees. I hope you’ll take a look at the gift page. These people lost everything and need everything. They are no threat to you, me, or our country.