Sign In Forgot Password
Home

Temple Beth El Blog

Sisterhood Shabbat: Becca Schwartz on JSS Refugee Resettlement Efforts 

01/10/2022 02:29:54 PM

Jan10

by Linda Reivitz

Becca Schwartz, resettlement director at Jewish Social Services of Madison (JSS), will be the guest speaker at TBE’s Sisterhood Shabbat on Friday, February 11, 2022. She will talk about her work with JSS, what we should expect for refugee resettlement in 2022, and how we can help with resettlement activities.

Becca joined JSS in early 2017 to head up the new refugee resettlement program, helping newcomers establish themselves and become a part of the community in Madison. She is a Middleton native who spent over a decade working in various parts of East and West Africa. She earned a BS in industrial engineering from the University of Iowa and an MBA from Drexel University before joining the Peace Corps, where she started working in small business development. Since then she has worked in leadership positions in both social enterprise and nonprofit organizations. Becca has lived in Senegal, Uganda, Ghana, and Nigeria and now lives with her family in Madison.

JSS has a long history of refugee resettlement, tracing its roots back to the Madison Welfare Fund created in 1940 to help resettle refugees in Madison fleeing the Holocaust. It is currently the only agency in Madison providing resettlement of Afghan refugees. Through the efforts of JSS and its community partners, almost 40 evacuees from Afghanistan once housed at Ft. McCoy have already been settled in Madison, and another 30 are expected by February. Wisconsin may eventually get hundreds of Afghan refugees.

We look forward to hearing from Becca at the Sisterhood Shabbat on February 11 and hope you will join us. You can find more information about the Sisterhood Shabbat here. 

To learn more about JSS refugee resettlement work as we head into 2022, see this update from Becca Schwartz. 
 

April 30, 2025 2 Iyar 5785