1 min read
When Maguno arrived in Olympia, Washington, in 2023 with two of her adult sons, after fleeing war in the Congo and spending 30 years in a refugee camp in Tanzania, she was not only starting again. One of the first things she wanted to do was pay back the travel loan that had helped bring her family to the US.
Like many refugees resettled in the US, she was expected to repay the cost of those flights after arrival. For Maguno, clearing the debt meant work, income and proof of independence in a country where newly arrived refugees can find themselves shut out by language barriers, missing references and no local employment record.
That chance came from Relume, an artisan candle company in Olympia, where resettled refugees are paid to hand-pour sustainable candles while practising English and building the kind of work history that can help them move through the US jobs market.
