Nonprofit founder wants everyone to feel welcome in the Quad Cities
Akwaaba is a common greeting in the Akhan language used in Ghana. It means “welcome.” The phrase perfectly embodied what Nana Ouro-Agoro hoped to support in the Quad Cities — a welcoming place for all.
Ouro-Agoro is the founder of Akwaaba QC, a nonprofit that supports immigrants and refugees from around the world in the Quad Cities area. Her desire to help this population stems from her own experience — her husband won the diversity lottery visa in 2008 when she was eight months pregnant with her first child. Preparing for parenthood was already a lot for the couple. Adding in a quick move to a new country from their home in Togo made an already stressful period even scarier.
She’s now made it her mission to help others navigate coming to the United States.
“I’m an immigrant myself. I walk in their shoes. I know what it’s like,” Ouro-Agoro said. “I believe that you can find the good out of everyone. I want this organization to welcome everyone from everywhere, because my goal is to see us, one day, be together and work together for the good of the community.”
A quick arrival
Because he won the diversity lottery visa, a program that seeks to increase migration from countries with lower immigration rates to the U.S. (at the time of writing, this program has not been shut down by the Trump administration), Ouro-Agoro’s husband was supposed to move to America first. But because she was so close to giving birth, immigration and embassy officials decided it made more sense for her to arrive first.
“So within one week, as I was thinking that I’d have my baby [in Togo], I bought the ticket, grabbed everything I could and left my country,” she said.
She arrived in Chicago on March 7, 2008, with less than a month left in her pregnancy. She had to quickly find maternal care, purchase the necessities for her child and try to understand how to live within her new home. She gave birth to her son April 5, 2008.
She was lucky to have family members who had already lived in the Quad Cities and could support her and her husband on the new journey. Even still, it wasn’t easy.
“It was very, very chaotic,” she said. “I had everything I needed for the baby back home, like nursery stuff, but I could not take them with me. So I had to look for new clothes with limited resources.”
Giving birth so soon after arriving complicated finding employment for Ouro-Agoro, which was part of the stipulation of their visa process. As people who arrived on their own and not as refugees or asylum seekers, they had less access to supportive services.
“It’s very scary,” she said. “My husband was the one who had to start working, and the job was not easy. But he didn’t have a choice. He had to do the job to feed us.”
Building trust
One year after giving birth, Ouro-Agoro got a job selling insurance. She was meeting with immigrants and refugees, who often didn’t know how the U.S. insurance system worked. She got to know people who struggled with the language and felt mistreated because of that struggle.
She tried to help those families as best as she could. She began working with a nonprofit that served African immigrants in Illinois in 2012. But she knew that people from all around the world called the Quad Cities home, and she wanted to help all of them.
“I just wanted something different. I wanted an organization where everyone is welcome,” she said.
She founded a nonprofit that did just that in 2022.
Akwaaba QC initially served the Illinois side of the Quad Cities, and expanded to Iowa in 2023. With funding from both the state of Illinois, the Scott County Health Department in Iowa and the Hubbell-Waterman Foundation, the organization is able to connect immigrants with any services they need to establish themselves in their new home. At the time of publication, the organization has not lost its funding due to executive orders related to immigration and refugee spending. However, Ouro-Agoro said the nonprofit’s funding was not included in a budget proposal from Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. They have also seen an increase in requests for services from refugees and asylees as a result of the federal funding freeze that is stretching their capacity.
Akwaaba QC operates with a community navigator model. The nonprofit trains volunteers who are leaders within their ethnic community to provide guidance and information to their community members. Eighteen people speaking 17 languages currently volunteer for the position.
The organization provides education and information, as well as any referrals to services they cannot provide. Ouro-Agoro said their biggest service is accompanying refugees and immigrants wherever they are needed, translating and helping them understand how to navigate U.S. systems.
“We want to bridge the gap and the cultural and language barriers,” Ouro-Agoro said. “Language is the biggest barrier. If people don’t understand what you are telling them, it’s going to be difficult for them to trust you.”
In three short years, Ouro-Agoro has witnessed the relief in many of her community members when they have someone walking beside them. With four full-time employees, they continue to find ways to make the immigration process more comfortable.
“When we serve people, not only do they feel welcomed, but they feel understood. They feel helped. They feel they belong. And they say they never got that feeling anywhere else,” she said.
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