WHAT WE DO
We provide a wide array of supportive services to families who came to America with refugee status. Our staff speak 14 languages and 83% are former refugees. To make a referral to any of our programs, click here.
Our Welcome Home Program is one-of-a-kind in the United States! We hire family educators who are former refugees, and these educators go into family homes and teach critical home skills. All classes are taught in the language the family speaks. Over the course of three classes (Healthy Home, Home/Fire Safety and Home Owners Maintenance Education), we teach 97 topics. Families retain an average of over 90% of the material one year after being taught. To learn more about this program, click here.
Watch a video that follows four families through our Welcome Home Program
Our Healthy Home classes are part of our Welcome Home Program. In these classes, we teach one-on-one in-home classes, in the language of the family, and explain how to use Western products to keep a home clean and healthy. We teach two in-home classes, and provide a total of 3 hours of hands-on, personalized education. To learn more about our Healthy Home Education classes, click here.
Our Home/Fire Safety Classes are part of our Welcome Home Program. In these classes, we teach one-on-one in-home classes, in the language of the family, and teach critical life saving skills. We install smoke and carbon monoxide detectors, teach how to use a fire extinguisher, create and practice a fire escape plan, teach tornado safety… and much more! We spend an average of 5.5 hours in each family’s home, providing one-on-one, hands-on education.
Maintaining a home is hard! We teach refugee homeowners 41 core areas of home maintenance via four in-person classes. Our family educators spend an average of 8 hours per family, in their home, providing hands-on, personalized education. To learn more about our HOME classes, click here.
Restoring Dignity started as a home-makeover for one family in 2012. This one-time event turned into a fully fledged non-profit, and we have since completed 43 of these transformations, impacting hundreds of refugees going through tragic situations in Omaha. Want to get involved? Check out our home makeover page and see when the next one will be!
Every summer, we accept donations of window air conditioning units, and then install them in the homes of families without any means of cooling their homes. We have installed hundreds of units since 2018. If you’d like to participate, visit our Facebook Page, to see when we launch our yearly window a/c drive! To donate towards our 2025 window a/c drive, click here.
We believe safe and healthy housing is a human right. Families come to us for help involving communication with their landlord, getting repairs made, and resolving move-out charge disputes.
When crisis hits, our team is able to respond quickly and efficiently. We have hosted dozens of Covid-19 mobile clinics (with interpreters on site), distributed thousands of items during the first few years of the pandemic, created an Emergency Language Alert Network in partnership with our local health department, and have assisted families impacted by flooding.
From 2018 to 2021, Restoring Dignity ran a Community Donation Center for refugee families. In 2021, we had the honor of building Omaha’s first Furniture Bank, and moving our donation center to an 18,000 square foot warehouse. The Furniture Bank is now run by our non-profit partner, The Furniture Project. To read more about the story of building the furniture bank, click here.