Keeping Our Promise, Inc. is the most comprehensive resettlement program for Afghan, Iraqi and Kurdish interpreters and support personnel in the United States today.
Based in Rochester, NY, we assist with initial visa applications under the Special Immigrant Visa Program. Once visas are granted, we will find and furnish our allies' first apartments, and help with finding employment. We help with a modest vehicle to get to work. Caring Circles help fully integrating families into their new lives so they can quickly become contributing members of the Rochester, NY community.
Rochester is now home to Pashtuns, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Hazara, Turkmen and Nuristanis from Afghanistan, Sunni and Shia Iraqis, as well as Kurdish allies, who served the U.S. and came to Rochester under the Special Immigrant Visa program for their faithful and honorable service to the United States in a war-zone. Find our story here!
Keeping Our Promise, Inc.By the Numbers (As of January 2021)
117 Afghan, Iraqi and Kurdish war-time allied families totaling 376 individuals have been resettled in Rochester under the Special Immigrant Visa Program with help from our volunteers since Oct. 2014. We have given these families complete home furnishings, and over half received cars under our Wheels for Work car grant program.
$32,173 has been paid in rent and security deposits since January 2020.
69 cars and vans, with a total value of $177,000 have been given to families through our Wheels for Work Program so SIVs can get to jobs -- 14 cars and vans in 2020. We have also helped 4 SIVs with car insurance because of layoffs during the COVID-19 shutdown.
Each family has been given a computer so the head of household can conduct job searches and children can do homework.
Every adult and child gets a bike thanks to R-Community Bikes.