AURORA —On a typical day inside Safari Thrift Store in the Del Mar Circle, there are employees from five or six different countries lifting furniture, sorting clothes and knick-knacks, working the cash register and cleaning while customers peruse the rows of neatly stacked, second-hand merchandise.
The thrift store in north Aurora operates as a refugee workforce training program for the African Community Center of Denver, a resettlement program for people just arriving in the metro area from Third World countries. For many of the employees there, the job at the thrift store is their first introduction into the American workforce.
“When I first arrived here, I went to the program to learn English,” said Tun Aung, 44, the manager at Safari Thrift Store. “I started working for the African Community Center immediately, driving the donation truck to pick up furniture that was sold in the thrift store and given to the refugees to furnish their apartments. I learned English and got my first job through them.”
Aung moved with his two children from Burma in 2008 and has worked with the community center, a division of the national, nonprofit Ethiopian Community Development Council since 2009. He earned American citizenship last year.
first opened in Denver in 2005 as a hands-on work skills program that was complete with on-site supplementary programs for things like janitorial, maintenance and cashier training as well as American language and dress lessons. The program was called Ready for Retail and was held in a classroom setting inside the store.
In 2012, the thrift store relocated to 738 Peoria St. so that the community center could have more retail and training space.
“It was also to be closer to the community that ECDC and the African Community Center works with,” said Melissa Theesen, managing director of the African Community Center. “In 2012, the majority of refugees that (we) resettled lived near Safari Thrift’s current location.”
Last year, state funding for the Ready for Retail program was shifted to other refugee training programs, effectively ending regular classroom training at the thrift store.
From 2005 to 2014, Safari Thrift had provided an eight-week, 260-hour employment readiness training in its retail setting.
“We lost a lot of funding for the Safari Thrift program in particular, but money was reallocated to different training programs that are still held daily at our Denver office,” Theesen said. “Classes are occasionally held at the thrift store a couple of times a month, including interactive job readiness visits, based upon community demand and available funds.”
She said the African Community Center is continuously pursuing funding to revive janitorial training and provide additional Ready for Retail programming at Safari Thrift, but added that the organization’s primary resettlement program is on an upward trajectory.
Last year the African Community Center resettled 572 refugees and expects to resettle 590 during the coming year, many of whom are landing in the north metro Aurora area.
Upon arrival to the metro area, refugees are assigned an African Community Center case manager and a career counselor. The case manager and employment team work with the refugee community member to select training options that will help the refugee become integrated and self-sufficient.
Santosh Das, 26, a Bhutanese native who came with his family from a refugee camp in Nepal, said that he already knew English by the time he reached Denver, and his current job at Safari Thrift was not his first in America. But he said that the mission of the store is unique to any other place he’s worked.
“When I came over here for the first time, it was really hard, but we found an apartment and furniture and made it work,” Das said. “Working here now has been very meaningful to me, because I feel like I can help other refugees who are in the same place that I used to be … Even if the classes have decreased here, we help each other all the time.”
Megan Mitchell: 303-954-2650, mmitchell@denverpost.com or @Mmitchelldp
