Airdate: April 30, 2025
Julie Rose: If you had to leave your home and everything you knew behind, what would you need from your new community?
Amy Dott Harmer: I am honoring the fact that they're my fellow brothers and sisters. And if I were in a similar situation, I would hope someone would reach out and be the person to lift me up.
Julie Rose: Hey, it's Julie. Welcome to Uncomfy, a show about sticking with moments that challenge us even when they're uncomfortable. And I know you're probably wondering, "Why would anybody choose to be uncomfortable," but I know from personal experience, and you probably do too, that sometimes a little discomfort has benefits if we can stay open and curious about it. And that is what we're here to explore, so let's get Uncomfy.
I'm joined by Amy Dott Harmer. She has spent the last decade working with refugees as executive director of Utah Refugee Connection, and the stories she shares on Instagram always pushed me to think outside of my own experience, to be a little more open to other cultures, which is not always a comfy thing, so I really wanted to have Amy Dott come on and talk about what she's learned. Amy Dott, welcome. Thanks for taking time today.
Amy Dott Harmer: Oh, it's such a joy to be with you, Julie.
Julie Rose: Would you tell us a story about having to get outside your own comfort zone in the work you do?
Amy Dott Harmer: Oh, um, there are so many, but, yes, when I first was starting my work in the refugee community, um, I was asked by a friend in the Burundi community to come to kind of a gathering she was having with refugee women, and she had set up an opportunity for them to come together to dance because dance was a big part of their culture. So, I, I knew that there was probably gonna be dancing, but I thought, "Oh, I'm just gonna drop off the diapers, say hello," and they, the diapers were kind of incentives to get the refugee to, women to come, and the woman coordinating it was a social worker and she wanted them to be able to dance and gather and be able to share.
And so, I got there and finally when it was time to dance, I was ready to, like, give the diapers and leave, and they were like, "Oh no, you can't leave. You need to come dance with us." Now, I need to put in context, I do not dance. I got kicked out of dance when I was a young girl. It wasn't my thing. I played soccer. I just, I mean, it is just. Not a comfortable place for me to be. And so, they really wanted me to dance, and I really resisted, and so I watched for a while, and they just use, you know, they just exuded joy and they were smiling and just feeling the music.
And I just thought to myself, "If I wanna be with these women in any kind of meaningful way, I just really can't stand on the sidelines," and so I stepped into this circle and I danced badly, awkwardly, laughably. And, um, I don't know, it cracked open something in me that I needed to just be okay breaking the ice. And they feel uncomfortable every day in their communities. They push themselves out of their comfort zones every day by being, you know, from a different country, different clothing, different color, and, um, I would never be able to reach them looking in and not participating. I, I can't control how things go, I'm gonna have to be more on the fly and be able to jump into their spaces if I expected them to jump into mine.
Julie Rose: If it allowed you to tap into a level of empathy for the discomfort that they experience as refugees in their daily lives, did it also build any level of, you know, that relationship you were talking about, hoping that, did it work? Like, were they then, more
Amy Dott Harmer: ‘cause then I,
Julie Rose: more willing sort of open up to you?
Amy Dott Harmer: I think they remembered this crazy white woman.
Julie Rose: Oh.
Amy Dott Harmer: I would see them. "Yeah, that's that Amy." And I would see them other places and even if they didn't speak English well, they'd come up and give me a hug, and I realized that, you know, if I just showed up and offered the diapers and left, it wasn't going to allow me to really understand them, um, or their needs very well. And I think when I started to sit with these women knee-to-knee and their stories, um, you become painfully aware of the ways people misunderstand them. You become painfully aware of the language barriers, cultural barriers, um, navigating these systems that aren't really designed for you. You just become so aware of how difficult it is and then how it feels to be met with suspicion and fear and silence and always being questioned about why you're here or what, you know, what you have to offer. And I just think when you step onto these dance floors or sit knee-to-knee with these people, you have to be uncomfortable and learn to be okay being uncomfortable.
Julie Rose: In order to be of help to them in, in a meaningful way.
Amy Dott Harmer: Yeah, yeah.
Julie Rose: Amy Dott, would you summarize for us kind of what the essence of the work that you do is? So, you talked about bringing diapers. Um, are you, are you mostly marshaling resources for these individuals who are resettling need to establish lives?
Amy Dott Harmer: So, what we do is we're a gap filler. We're a nonprofit. We don't take any federal funding, and we look at what the needs are in the refugee space, and then we try and let the general community know meaningful ways to learn about, serve and give to refugees that meet the needs that we're seeing here. So, we're kind of like a matchmaker, a service broker.
Julie Rose: Can you tell us about a need that either you or people who have been sort of recruited by you have been able to meet? What, what are some of these?
Amy Dott Harmer: Oh gosh, it's so magical. I mean, it's a really amazing, like, we'll have someone come in and one of my favorite stories is there was a boy that messaged me on social media, and he was from the Nepali community, and it was during Covid, and he was really struggling with his computer. It kept crashing, and, you know, he didn't have a lot of resources, and about the same time, someone said, "Hey, I have a computer that I would like to offer," and I remember actually getting the computer and going to his house, and he came out, and I handed it through a little crack in my window saying, "Ashish, I have this com, computer for you. Will you promise to do good with it?" And he said, "Miss Amy, I promise." Well, he started a nonprofit to help the homeless with that computer, and he started teaching Nepali refugee children online English and, like, that was just this magical connection, and it happens frequently.
Largely, the things that we collect at our share house are, um, general kits that we offer to refugees that attend 16 hours of classes. So, we're offering them incentives for going to their classes, and a lot of the items are things they can't buy with food stamps. And we go through about, oh, 400 kits a month, and those are all provided by people in the community that just know, "Hey, I wanna do something, and I don't know what to do," so they decide to put together these kits. We do about 2,000 to 5,000 backpacks every year to get school kids excited for school. When they put on those backpacks, it's like they transform into these more perfect students that are excited about school, um, and all of those backpacks come from people in the community that wanna show refugees they care about them, and they want them to be successful in our community. So, I mean, it's magical. I mean, some days are really hard, but it is so fun to see someone come in with a need and within, like, 48 hours that need is met.
Julie Rose: Yeah. We're in a really politicized time right now, um, when it comes to immigrants, to migrants is another word to, uh, refugees, often all of those things kind of get tied up. And, for example, President Trump halted all refugee resettlement admissions into the United States on, on the day of his inauguration, um, and we know that funding has been cut to some of the agencies, these nonprofits that do re, refugee resettlement work. Um, has that changed the, the nature of the work that you're doing?
Amy Dott Harmer: Yeah, it's definitely, it's really heartbreaking to see families coming in and saying, you know, "The resettlement agency that's been helping me is no longer able to case manage me, case manage our family, and we're not going to have the items that we need or the rent that we need after April." And it's devastating, I mean, it's really hard. And, you know, one of the things that is interesting for me in this space is I have tried really hard to be okay sitting with uncomfortable stories and in uncomfortable situations, and I don't like, um, no one likes, like, dissonance, or no one likes to be in these uncomfortable situations, but it's interesting when you hear the stories of refugees and what they've been through to get here, all the interviews, all the background checks, leaving family members behind sometimes because the paperwork hasn't been finished, or, you know, refugees who have seen family me, members, you know, killed in front of them or burned in front of them. It's very, it's hard to hear these stories. Like sometimes you just, you just, I mean, I can just feel my whole body, like, tense up and as I'm sitting knee-to-knee with them, and it's interesting what those stories can enable you to do when you come across uncomfortable situations right now.
Julie Rose: Hmm. Um, what do you mean by uncomfortable right now?
Amy Dott Harmer: So, well, you know, like, it used to be, I would say, "Oh, I work with refugees," and people would go, "Oh, that sounds really cool, you know, tell me more." And now there's a little bit more of, like, I don't know which side they're on when I say, "I work with refugees." Like, is this someone that's gonna be receptive? Because there's a lot of, um, negative verbiage going around and there's a lot of questions. Like, I don't know how many times in the last month someone's asked me, "How many of the refugees that you work with are here legally?" And sometimes I just get so mad because if they knew, refugees are here legally. I mean, if they have refugee status, they've gone through, like, a myriad of background checks, both before they come to the United States, once they get to the United States, and they, they've been through horrific things.
Julie Rose: But the misunderstanding, which, uh, you know, I, I guess it, it's kind of complicated, but there is, there is also something else, which is, um, people who come across the border without refugee status, but say, "I'm fleeing danger. I need to be granted asylum," right? And that's a different category of people in the United States from what you, when you say refugee, you're specifically serving a community that has gone to a UN refugee office, in a refugee camp often, and then they have actually been granted status before even coming here, and then they are sent to whatever city can handle them or wants them to come, and then they are sort of given a lot of services as well.
Amy Dott Harmer: Uh, yeah, and I feel like I've been really mindful of talking to people, to just, I consciously say to myself, "Educate, advocate, don't continue to agitate," and so I feel like I've jumped into being a little more curious. Like, "Tell me a little bit more about what you know about refugees."
Julie Rose: When they ask you something like that question of, "How many are legal?"
Amy Dott Harmer: Yeah, so, and, and I credit, you know, some, some really good books and some really good, um, mentors of helping me navigate that with more calm and, and not responding with, like, "You're such an idiot. I can't believe you don't know that!" And the other thing that I have really tried to do is, you know, it is heartbreaking to see all of the services that are being dismantled, and I'm consciously trying to look at, "What are these gaps and then how can we help those in the community that that feel love and an inclination to welcome these individuals to connect those two so that refugees can find hope and meaning and a place among us?"
Um, but it's interesting, I always wear this little red thread bracelet, and it comes from the Nepali culture, um, Raksha Bandhan, where siblings make kind of an oath to each other, um, brothers and sisters in the Nepali community saying, "I will care for you and protect you and help you," and I really feel like when I share these personal stories about refugees, I am honoring the fact that they're my fellow brothers and sisters. And if I were in a similar situation, I would hope someone would reach out and be the, the person to lift me up.
Um, there's a quote by Michael Lewis, that I just, I probably quote it monthly, weekly and it basically says, um, "If you've had success, you've had luck, and if with luck comes obligation, you owe a debt not only to your gods, you owe a debt to the unlucky." And I think refugees are some of the most unlucky people I know simply because of where they were born. It could very easily be you. It could very easily be me. I have been very lucky and very fortunate in my space to have opportunities where I haven't had to sit in that uncomfortable peril for my life. But what I do have is I've had success and I've had luck, and I owe a debt to God, my God, but I also owe a debt to the unlucky around me.
And had I never stepped onto that dance floor and stepped out of my comfortable, easy, successful, lucky life, I wouldn't have known about the amazing, beautiful religions, ethnicities, um, cultures that I have been exposed to in the last 10 years, and my life would be so radically different, but so radically sad. I mean, these people just bring so much joy to my life, and my hope is that, you know, even in these very challenging times that we're okay to come into greater connection with one another, even if we have different opinions and be okay being uncomfortable, but willing to listen to perspectives that are different than our own.
Julie Rose: Amy Dott Harmer is the Executive Director of Utah Refugee Connection, and they're online at serverefugees.org. Amy Dott, thank you for sharing your, your stories and your time with us today.
Amy Dott Harmer: Uh, well, it was a pleasure and thank you for making me feel a little uncomfortable but then making me feel comfortable as we sat and talked. I feel like I'm talking to a good friend, so thanks for the good conversation.
Julie Rose: And thank you for getting Uncomfy with us today. Well, now it's your turn. I would love to hear from you about a moment when you leaned into discomfort instead of backing away. How did it go? What did you learn? What difference has it made for you? Whatever it was, I'd love to hear that story. You can email me at uncomfy@byu.edu or reach out to us on social media to keep the conversation going.
And in the meantime, if you're into these kinds of thought-provoking conversations, I think you'll like my other podcast, Top of Mind with Julie Rose. You can find out on all the podcast platforms.
Uncomfy is a BYUradio podcast. Samuel Benson produces it, and the team includes Jake Hasleton and Sam Payne. Our theme music was composed by Kelsey Nay. I'm Julie Rose. Can't wait to get Uncomfy with you again next week.
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