Por Sue Smith
Early in the formation of the Strengthening Families program through the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship’s Global Missions, field personnel Annette Ellard recognized the potential impact that a trauma-informed program for families could have among refugee populations from Burma.
Annette and her husband, Steve Clark, officially began ministry among refugees in 2006, just as the United States began resettling tens of thousands of Karen people from Burma. The Karen, along with Chin, Karenni and other ethnic minorities from Burma (also known as M
yanmar), became collectively one of the largest refugee groups admitted to the U.S. between 2006 and 2017.
Families arriving during those years faced profound challenges: limited formal education after years in refugee camps, language barriers, trauma from war and displacement, entry-level employment in unfamiliar labor systems and the task of raising children in a very different cultural context.
When Annette and Steve began their work, they were not thinking about creating a program. They were simply walking alongside families and building relationships.
They sat in living rooms, listened to stories and shared meals. They watched younger children adapt quickly to American schools while parents (many of whom were illiterate) struggled to navigate a new language and unfamiliar systems.
In these everyday moments, they saw both extraordinary resilience and deep strain. Their relational approach to ministry, along with the experience of others serving displaced communities across the United States, ultimately helped what would become the Strengthening Families program.
Many of the refugee families from Burma had fled through the jungle to escape soldiers, survived village burnings or endured forced labor, only to face years of uncertainty in refugee camps along the Thailand-Burma border. Experiences like these leave lasting marks on the nervous system. Parents and teens often carried deep anxiety that manifested in hypervigilance, fear of authority, difficulty sleeping and strong reactions to stress.
Resettlement brought its own pressures. After years subsisting in camps, families were suddenly expected to live in urban apartments, work in factories, repay travel loans, manage bills and navigate public transportation, schools and healthcare systems. Even official mail could trigger anxiety. For people whose displacement was caused by government forces, authority did not automatically feel safe.
Annette and Steve soon realized that families needed more than information. They needed patient explanation, trustworthy relationships and reassurance over time.
Faith was also central. For many Karen and Chin families, Christian faith had sustained them through persecution and displacement. Annette recognized that any effort to strengthen families must respect and build upon that spiritual foundation.
Another pattern soon became clear: shifting family roles.
Children typically learned English more quickly than their parents and adapted faster through American schooling. Many adolescents became interpreters and cultural guides for their families, navigating systems their parents could not access.
Bwe K’paw*, a Karen participant in early listening sessions, described arriving in the United States in 2008 as a preteen. Her family had fled Burma after soldiers captured and tortured her father. Her mother lived for years with constant fear. Even the sound of dogs barking signaled danger.
“When the dogs barked,” she explained, “it meant the soldiers were near—that death or torture was near.”
Although her family now lives in safety, those memories remain. Fireworks or a car backfiring can still trigger fear responses for her mother.
As a teenager, she became the cultural and linguistic bridge for her family—interpreting medical appointments, explaining paperwork, and navigating unfamiliar systems while still adjusting to a new country herself.
Today Bwe K’paw is a young mother of two, and her responsibilities have only grown.
She now serves as primary support for her aging parents while raising children with developmental and medical needs of their own. Some mornings she wakes at 1 a.m. to address a problem with her parents before returning home to care for her children while her husband prepares for work.
She describes her exhaustion simply:
“I’m not tired from the body. I’m tired from the inside—the mind.”
Her parenting anxieties echo the quiet questions many refugee mothers carry:
Am I feeding my children correctly?
Am I guiding them the right way?
Am I giving them enough attention?
Am I enough?
Bwe K’paw also described the uncertainty of navigating school enrollment, medical decisions and specialized services—often without generational guidance or peer reassurance. Unlike many American families, she cannot turn to parents or relatives who have already navigated these systems.
Her story reflects a broader pattern across refugee communities:
- Adolescents who once served as family interpreters are now adults carrying unresolved stress.
- Young mothers are simultaneously parenting children and caring for traumatized parents.
- Trauma symptoms often persist across generations.
- Cultural expectations of caring for elders intensify role strain.
- Many women experience deep mental exhaustion while continuing to function as primary caregivers.
Without relational support, these pressures can contribute to anxiety, caregiver burnout, marital strain and intergenerational conflict.
Strengthening Families responds directly to these realities.
The program provides emotionally safe spaces where parents can process stress and trauma, learn tools for emotional regulation and receive practical support in navigating educational and healthcare systems. Just as importantly, it builds peer relationships that reduce isolation and remind parents they are not alone.
Many caregivers in refugee communities function as intergenerational bridges, holding together the needs of children and parents across cultures and generations. Strengthening Families helps support those bridges.
The Strengthening Families program did not emerge from theory alone.
It grew from listening—recognizing that trauma often hides beneath parenting struggles, that anxiety can be a survival story still living in the body and that relational safety can interrupt cycles of fear.
The refugee families from Burma who arrived in the United States in the early 2000s helped clarify something essential: Healing is not primarily about fixing families. It is about strengthening the relationships that already sustain them.
And when those relationships are nurtured with dignity, patience and respect, resilience rises to the surface.
That is where Strengthening Families began.
Strengthening Families supports parents and caregivers in healing from trauma, strengthening parenting skills, and building secure family relationships that nurture faith and spiritual growth.
* Bwe K’paw is a pseudonym used for the individual’s privacy.