Our Mission and Values

The Bloomington Refugee Support Network (RSN) began in 2016 when community member Diane Legomsky held a meeting at Beth Shalom Synagogue, inviting everyone who was interested in supporting refugees. The meeting was an educational forum, open to the community, and over 120 people attended.  It was clear then that the local effort needed to be more than a Beth Shalom committee.  Bloomington had become a federally authorized resettlement site for refugees in 1981. At around that time, federally recognized refugee resettlement agencies were established in Indiana. While RSN was organized as a 501(c)(3) entity in 2017, it has never been a federally recognized resettlement agency; instead, it was created as a grassroots organization to provide local refugee support using volunteers. RSN is not in any way affiliated with Exodus Refugee Immigration nor does it work in coordination with them. When the organization began serving people outside of the City of Bloomington, the organization deemphasized the “Bloomington” in the title and switched to Refugee Support Network or simply RSN. Today, RSN provides some additional key services that are impractical for a federally recognized resettlement agency to provide, friendship and an ongoing connection for refugees to the local community.