GLOBAL VOICES
My Life with Dignity Debby Nichols
Over time a small core group of people formed, mostly from the international community. Many Czechs seemed to hold the same position as their government, and it was challenging to mobilize the Czech evangelical church to assist us.
A Place for The Displaced To make a long story short, Dignity was birthed out of this situation. Petra is the director, and after a few years of watching her struggle with the administrative and scheduling issues, her husband quit his job and joined her in the work. Through faith and making their needs known, God is providing for Tom and Petra.
About five years ago my life changed. I went from being a person who supported her children and husband full time to a person who had a chunk of free time on her hands once the kids grew up and moved out. My newly gained free time happened to converge with the migration of refugees through Prague in 2015. Moved to find a way to help them, I found groups of people helping at the train stations as refugees passed through and transferred to trains going to their desired destinations. Then this work came to an abrupt halt as European countries started to close their borders. And refugees who came into the Czech train stations? They were now put under the authority of the Czech government who placed them into detentions centers. The volunteers’ work at the stations ended, but my heart still ached for these dear people who were displaced. Along the way, I had met Petra, a Czech woman, who has a heart bigger than anyone I know. She continued to find ways to help with the refugee situation. Her husband, Tom, is British. Petra began going to the detention centers seeking ways to help the refugees. She started bringing food and clothes, and I helped by gathering food and clothes from others who wanted to help. We quickly caught on that the Czech authorities were not keen to be hospitable to these people and wanted to make their hellish life even more so to pressure them to return to their home countries. Sadly, I cannot say that their attitude has changed much even today.
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Dignity exists to help displaced people to survive, and then thrive wherever they are. Our desire is to share Christ with everyone whom we come into contact. This is not always easy as people come and go quickly, but our team tries to keep in contact with them no matter where they end up. The ministry of Dignity has morphed over the years and continues to react creatively to the government’s changes in its approach to refugees and the changes in global events that create refugee situations. In 2016, we began our first big task to assist approximately 30 Iraqi Christians to settle into the Czech Republic. Thankfully, they had all been granted asylum. That was a considerable project which has been a great success, even in the eyes of the government. People in government noticed how Dignity did a better job than their own governmental departments. Prague newspapers reported the wonderful success of the resettlement of these Iraqis with positive articles and photos.
A Solid Success Rate A few weeks ago, the Prague mayor approached Petra asking for our help to settle the newly arrived Afghans into the Czech Republic. When Petra asked why he was talking to her and not the government agencies, the mayor said that he had observed that Dignity has a much better success rate than the others. (And now, we are prayerfully wondering what God wants us to do to help the 152 Afghans who have just been given permission to stay in country.) The mayor saw that most of the original Iraqi group now have apartments, jobs that sustain them and children who feel quite
