“Helping lead PRISM means standing with people like me who had to risk everything just to be ourselves. This is my calling.”
“PRISM gave me more than support – it gave me a family. As a queer asylum seeker, it’s where I found safety, friendship, and the strength to start over in a new country.” – Rufael from Ethiopia
For many LGBTQ+ newcomers like Rufael, arriving in the U.S. brings both relief and grief. For the first time, they don’t have to live in fear or hide their identity. But there’s no one waiting for them here, either. No family. No familiar voices. Just an unfamiliar place, long days alone, and the quiet realization that freedom isn’t the same as belonging.
PRISM, AsylumWorks’ support group for LGBTQ+ newcomers, exists to change that.
In 2020, two gay asylum seekers from East Africa walked into the D.C. LGBTQ Center in search of community. A small support group began to form, first under the name Center Global. As the group grew, members reached out to AsylumWorks, hoping to give it a permanent home. In February 2021, AsylumWorks officially adopted the group and renamed it PRISM: Pride Refugee & Immigrant Support Meet-up.
In its early days, PRISM was led by staff. But by 2024, something had shifted. Meetings that once buzzed with conversation grew quiet. Chairs sat empty. And the team began asking a hard but necessary question: Are we the right people to be leading this group?
To reorient the group and empower leadership from within, staff invited four longtime members to form a steering committee and challenged them to reimagine what PRISM could become. After months of planning, the committee’s first event – a drag brunch – drew seventeen attendees, more than any gathering in recent memory.
Since then, PRISM has hosted intimate social events and offered a legal workshop tailored to LGBTQ+ newcomers. 15 members have connected with the group, and now they’re determined to keep the momentum going – organizing, imagining, and building new ways to connect and care for one another.
Thanks to the steering committee, PRISM gatherings look different than they did in those quiet months of 2024. Voices fill the room again. New and existing members exchange phone numbers, plan outings, and celebrate milestones like landing a job or being granted asylum.
PRISM has become exactly what Rufael and others were searching for – and what countless others still need: a place where freedom and belonging meet.