Monarch Immigrant Services

03/23/2026

Our team is full of some of the most remarkable folks around! Their personalities, stories, and drive are what makes this place so special. So, here is a glimpse into the heartbeat of our organization 🧡✨ a moment to acknowledge our wonderful team.

Kicking us off:
Meet Shimaa Badawy! She is the Director of Social Services here at Monarch. You can often find her at the farmers markets!

03/20/2026

03/10/2026

We have friends everywhere. Huge thanks to the ladies behind Golden Gems and Hidden Gem STL for selecting us as their monthly charitable organization for February. Go support the community-minded people supporting us!!

03/08/2026

If you ever see us running, we are being chased. That said, the more athletic among you should go support our partners at the International Institute St. Louis for their annual 5K!

🏃‍♀️ Registration is NOW OPEN for Race For Refugees! 🏃‍♂️

We're excited to announce that you can now officially sign up to be part of the 8th Race for Refugees! Join us for the 5k or 1M fun run and be part of an incredible community committed to advocating and raising critical funds that supports refugees and immigrants in St. Louis.

There are so many ways to get involved! You can register as an individual runner, form a team with friends and family, or participate virtually if you can't join us in person. Not a runner? No problem! We need enthusiastic volunteers to help make race day a success. You can also support the Race for Refugees by becoming a sponsor or making a donation. Head to our website now to sign up and join us in making the 8th Race For Refugees the best one yet!



link to race roster: https://raceroster.com/events/2026/114379/race-for-refugees

03/06/2026

Courtney Agee of Moral Mutiny Studio is a talented local STL artist. We are so so very grateful to her for donating proceeds from the sale of one of her pieces to support our work in the St. Louis region.

It means so much when artists use their creativity not only to inspire, but to give back. If the community work gives you a spark, why not use it to pass that on!? 🤩Community support like this helps us continue providing resources, advocacy, and most importantly direct services to the immigrant and refugee individuals and families we serve every day.

Take a moment to check out Courtney’s incredible multimedia work at .mutiny and show some love! She clearly has put so much into her craft. Supporting artists who support their community is always a good idea. 🎨💛

Courtney, thank you for thinking of us and for turning art into action!

02/26/2026

Joan was good people. A lioness of the labor movement and a stalwart advocate for the people doing the lion's share of the labor (*cough* immigrants), we started working with Joan when she was with Missouri Immigrant and Refugee Advocates (MIRA), (which has more or less ended up as the Missouri Immigrant Policy Coalition at Migrant and Immigrant Community Action Project- MICA Project), which was helping to bring the Immigrant Service Providers Network STL into the world. Shortly thereafter, Joan sent Daly Sullentrup our way as a bookkeeper, who had been with her since her organizing days in Texas. That was over a decade ago, and Daly has been the heart and soul of grant and financial management at Monarch ever since and - more importantly - a mensch like Joan.

02/25/2026

This is a "support the sponsors" post. The awesome people at Found By The Pound donated a portion of their sales from January to support our work with immigrant and refugee populations in the St. Louis region. Return the favor and visit Found Vintage - South Grand, Found Vintage - Delmar, or make a day of it and hit the warehouse in Berkeley! Go do it!!!

02/25/2026

Self-care is hard for a lot of us - especially right now. The provider collective at Empowered Spaces is a lot better at and more intentional about self-care practice than we are. And they are gracious enough to be holding a full day of classes including yoga, meditation, and more to benefit our work in St. Louis and that of the Monarca rapid response line in Minneapolis this Sunday, March 1 at their location in Webster Groves.

We are so grateful for the support from trusted providers in the community. Check out the event!

Join Empowered Spaces for a day of embodied solidarity with immigrant communities here at home and in Minneapolis. The Empowered Spaces collective is coming together to offer a full day of movement, mindfulness, nervous system-guided practices to foster connection, care, compassion, and collective r

02/23/2026

Chúc mừng năm mới! Always a good time celebrating Lunar New Year with our friends in the St. Louis Vietnamese Community. Great job as usual by Kris, Vi, Linda, and community leadership! Monarch was tabling for citizenship assistance and health insurance navigation, but special legislative envoy Anton still found time to bother Mayor Cara Spencer (we are sorry for whatever he said). Not pictured: lion dance, musical performances, lucky envelopes, food spread. Happy New Year!

02/20/2026

We didn't intend on a Year of Mourning for our friend Ellen Sherman, but that's kind of how it worked out, as we didn't have the heart/stomach to replace her and kept her position open for an entire year following her sudden passing. "Well that's just stupid," I can hear her saying, "Who's going to work with the volunteers?" Point taken, ma'am. So one year and a few days later, we are formally announcing Zamzama SaFi as Monarch's new Volunteer Coordinator. ZZ is aware of the shoes she has to try to fill, but she's pretty remarkable in her own right. One of ZZ's first tasks will be coordinating volunteer labor for the Ellen Sherman Senior Picnic, where we bring all of our foreign-born senior groups and their families together for a cookout and entertainment in the park. And the picnic is named after Ellen now.

02/18/2026

Wishing a happy and blessed February 17th to all our friends and fellow travelers: Ramadan Mubarak, Happy Lunar New Year, and laissez les bon temps rouler (you've still got a few hours left on that last one...)!!

02/02/2026

We’ve been kind of quiet lately. Not because we don’t have opinions – we’re an immigrant services organization, of course we have thoughts on everything going on – but because we’ve been busy supporting our foreign-born communities with direct legal assistance, mental health counseling for children, adults, and families, systems navigation, senior engagement, and language access. Continuing this work means trying to hang on to our remaining funding and – quite frankly – that sometimes means making waves on personal and not agency time. It doesn’t always feel good, but it keeps the wheels moving. At least for now.

But we want you to know that WE HEAR YOU and WE SEE YOU. Volunteer inquiries are pouring in faster than we can respond, so much so that we’re onboarding a new volunteer coordinator. Unsolicited donations are coming in from people we’ve never met, but who want to support the work we’re doing in St. Louis. Thank you, thank you, thank you for having our back and the back of our immigrant and refugee communities during these “interesting” times. You inspire us to keep going.