Pascal & Family Reunite

Family together again after years as refugees

After two decades of insecurity, Pascal’s family found a safe, supportive home in Minnesota. In 2004, they fled the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo and spent years in a refugee camp in Malawi. Finally, over the course of several years, Pascal, his siblings and parents resettled in Minnesota.

“Being reunited is such a very important thing to me. It is the International Institute that has reunited the family again,” Pascal says.

Determined to become self-sufficient, three of the brothers completed the International Institute of Minnesota’s Nursing Assistant Training and their sister enrolled in Dietary Aide class, soon beginning jobs.

“We believe education is the key to life, to the future,” Pascal says. “What makes us hopeful is that there is a very good system of education in which everybody has that right of education. It’s something that we have been missing for so many years.”

Being reunited is such a very important thing to me. It is the International Institute that has reunited the family again.

Despite the family’s triumphs, two of Pascal’s siblings continued waiting to be resettled. Finally, in 2022, Pascal’s sister Adeline and her seven children traveled 1,500 miles to reunite with family in Minnesota.

“I want to work hard so I can get a job and take care of my family,” Adeline told the Sahan Journal in a story about their family’s reunification.

Why resettlement and reunification matter

Re-uniting families is the heart of the Institute’s mission. We work with families who long to be together, whose love crosses oceans and continents, and who need each other to be whole.

Pascal hopes that by sharing their story they might help others in similar circumstances. “We would like the world to know what we have been going through,” he says. “Some people don’t have any idea what being a refugee means.”

It’s easy to confuse the meanings of “refugee” and “migrant,” though they’re distinctly different. Refugees are people fleeing armed conflict or persecution, and who need sanctuary elsewhere because returning home could have potentially deadly consequences. Refugees are defined and protected in international law to ensure that their “basic human rights are respected to allow them to live in dignity and safety while helping them to find a longer-term solution,” according to UNHCR.

Of the estimated 120 million displaced people worldwide, almost 3 million are refugees needing resettlement in 2025, with millions more waiting.

After all that Pascal’s family has faced, he reflects on the family’s transformation:

“We have found a peace that we didn’t have for more than 20 years. We have found people that we can call friends, neighbors, and especially we have people that care about us and are helping us to settle in this country, which is not an easy thing.”