When RI's immigrants and refugees don't know where to turn, this nonprofit lifts them up

PROVIDENCE – On a bitterly cold morning in mid-February, dozens of people are lined up at a building off Broad Street, long before the doors open up for a food distribution that will stretch into the afternoon.

Before the day is over, staff and volunteers at Higher Ground International – a nonprofit in the heart of South Providence – will have given out bags of culturally appropriate food to 300 people at their headquarters and delivered to 60 more families in the area.

The recipients are immigrants and refugees, mostly from Liberia and other countries in West Africa, but in recent years they've included Latinos, Haitians and some from Afghanistan.

In the middle of the controlled chaos and a blending of different languages is founder and CEO Henrietta White-Holder, directing traffic and giving encouragement to those in line. No one escapes her orbit without a hug. White-Holder commands the room because she’s walked in the shoes of those who are here: She came to Rhode Island as a teenager in 1980 after civil war destroyed the privileged life in Liberia she'd known as a child.

Like many, she made Rhode Island home. Decades ago, the state had one of the largest Liberian populations in the country, at nearly 20,000. There are now 10,000 to 12,000 who have relocated here.

What services does Higher Ground International provide?

“I think God calls each and every one of us in a unique way to be able to go out and serve. And for me, my calling was to be able to go out and help lift people up,” said White-Holder, who founded Higher Ground International in 2008 with a $1,000 contribution and a vision to help those in her community.

“We often hear this thing about when something bad happens why isn’t somebody doing something?” White-Holder said. “Somebody needs to do something about it. So who is the somebody we’re waiting for, right? I wasn’t waiting for somebody else to be that somebody. I was the somebody. I needed to do something, to help change people’s lives.”

Along the way, that vision has included youth initiatives, assistance and programs for the elderly, and, since 2015, food distribution that now tops $25,000 a month, swelling to $60,000 during Thanksgiving week.

“For us, our community, coming out to ask for help is stigmatizing,” White-Holder said. “It’s not something that people will easily do, because of what people in the community are going to say about them.”

So she has had to build up their trust. Her work has caught the attention of not only the local Liberian community, but government officials and leaders in the Rhode Island nonprofit world as well.

'The Matriarch of Good' in Rhode Island

Shortly after Cortney Nicolato became president and CEO of The United Way of Rhode Island in 2018, she went to see White-Holder with a check for $20,000 because of the work she was doing.

“I call Henrietta the Matriarch of Good here in the state of Rhode Island,” Nicolato said in an interview last month. “The minute I met her, she took me right in and I became one of her kids and I think she does that for everybody. She also influences and inspires so many in the nonprofit sector, and she’s taken so many under her wing to say: bad times and good, you can do this.”

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Nicolato said the need for resources is greater now than it was before the pandemic, adding that United Way supports Higher Ground because of the reach and results it has had for so many.

“[Henrietta] is as resourceful as you can get,” she said. “She will find resources and money, she will call folks and say, ‘Do you know of any opportunities?’ Because she is never going to not support someone. She is always going to make sure there is food on somebody’s table as much as she can help it.”

Springboard to success for a young Liberian immigrant

Weayonnoh Nelson-Davies was one of the people in Higher Ground's youth program after she arrived in Rhode Island from Liberia as a teenager in 1996.

“I gravitated toward that, because it was finding young people who understood my journey, trying to make a life for themselves,” she said. “[Henrie] became our mom, our aunt, our mentor, helping us to navigate how it is to be in America. But also helping us to own our leadership, even in a new country.”

Nelson-Davies went on to earn a law degree from Roger William University and is now the executive director of the Economic Progress Institute. “Over the years [Henrie’s] remained unchanged. She sees people, she sees the good in you, she brings out the good in you. And so for us, young people unsure about what life was, unsure about our future, she saw our potential.”

White-Holder helped Nelson-Davies’ mother get acclimated when she joined her daughter from Liberia in 2000, long before the founding of Higher Ground International.

Fostering community through the Sweetie Care enrichment program

After Higher Ground was created, many elders in the Liberian community gravitated to a program called Sweetie Care, including Nelson-Davies’ mother. Some of the women did not know how to read or write, so White-Holder started literacy classes.

“It’s hard for older immigrants in general to try and adjust to life. They’re intimidated by the system. Picking up the phone to call to set an appointment, it makes them scared,” Nelson-Davies said.

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“What Sweetie Care has done is to help them navigate the system … and get the services they need,” she added. “But also that sense of community. To sing together, to play together, to learn together. I think it has been the reason my mom has not felt so homesick in her years here because she’s had that community.”

The early years of Higher Ground were challenging. It launched just before the Great Recession in 2008, and White-Holder was working a full-time job for another nonprofit while trying to get her own organization up and running.

She believed that if she did the right thing, and served the community, the resources would follow.

“Financially and strategically, you have to be smart,” White-Holder said. “You’re starting something, you know you want to be able to help people. You can’t do everything else at once.

“What these funders and donors and everybody who are giving you money want to make sure, OK, we’ve given her money, where’s the impact? What has she done with it? What can we see for the money we’re giving?” she said.

Coming soon for Higher Ground: A new headquarters

Higher Ground will take a big step later this year when it moves into a refurbished 10,000-square-foot headquarters in a former warehouse on Ninigret Avenue, a mile from its current location. The building is being remodeled in two phases and will eventually have office space, a conference room, a large assembly space, classrooms, a social service space and a quiet room. And, of course, a space for the monthly food distribution.

White-Holder said she has people on wait lists for food and Sweetie Care that Higher Ground should be able to accommodate when the nonprofit has more room.

Regardless of the location, though, the mission remains the same:

‘’It’s hard enough for folks who are coming into this country to change their lives, for the betterment of their families, or whatever decision they made to get here,” Nicolato said. “And [Henrie] makes it just a bit easier. At the end of the day that’s why we do what we do in the nonprofit sector.”

The Rhode Island Spotlight is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that relies, in part, on donations. For more information, go to RhodeIslandSpotlight.org. Reach Jim Hummel at Jim@RhodeIslandSpotlight.org.

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: How Higher Ground International lifts up RI's immigrants and refugees