NORWICH — A nonprofit organization founded by volunteers to assist asylum seekers and refugees in the Upper Valley has hired its first executive director.
Melissa Bertenthal officially began her full-time role at Supporting and Helping Asylum-seekers and Refugees, more often known by its acronym, SHARe, on July 1.
She comes to the Norwich-based organization from the Ethiopian Community Development Council, a national refugee resettlement agency in Brattleboro, Vt., where she served as director of programs. She is SHARe’s first employee.
The role at SHARe appealed to her because it offers “the opportunity and the potential that comes with stepping into a community that’s so committed to passionately welcoming” newcomers, Bertenthal, of Putney, Vt., said in a phone interview last week.
Bertenthal was selected from a pool of about 35 applicants, Martha Tecca, who serves as a consultant to SHARe’s board and as interim operating team lead, said.
Bertenthal, 44, who grew up in Charlottesville, Va., has worked in refugee resettlement since 2007, is fluent in Spanish and has lived in Vermont for almost two years. While her official start date was earlier this month, Bertenthal has been working for SHARe since May.
While the organization has worked with a part-time consultant in the last year, it became clear to the board that SHARe could benefit from hiring someone full time.
“During the past two years, SHARe has experienced more requests for assistance from newcomers than we have been able to respond to with solely volunteer service providers,” board chair Nick Krembs wrote an email last week.
The board is hopeful that Bertenthal’s experience “settling newcomers, motivating volunteers, building an effective organization, collaborating with partnering organizations, connecting with funding sources and connecting with all the people she encounters” will help to energize the organization, Krembs said.
SHARe was founded in 2020 by like-minded Upper Valley residents interested in supporting asylum seekers and grew out of the Immigrant Support Network of the United Valley Interfaith Project, which has since disbanded.
In 2023, SHARe and and the Upper Valley Neighborhood Support Team — which was founded through a partnership with the Worcester, Mass.-based Ascentria Care Alliance that helps support new Americans — joined together to welcome Afghan evacuees, according to Tecca. Another nonprofit organization, CommunityCare of Lyme, which assists Lyme residents, helped provide funding.
In the last five years, SHARe has helped to welcome more than 107 people from 15 countries and worked with more than 75 community organizations. More than 450 volunteers have assisted in SHARe’s efforts, from providing transportation to assisting with English language skills.
“Our work has grown tremendously and it is a volunteer-based organization that is dependent on the coordination of volunteers, many businesses and organizations that collaborate to provide the services SHARe provides,” Tecca said in a phone interview last week about the decision to hire an executive director.
Its budget for the 2025 calendar year is $174,000; the organization declined to provide Bertenthal’s salary. Foundations and private donors provide the majority of SHARe’s funding; it also received a grant from the State of Vermont to support Vermont asylum-seekers, Tecca wrote in an email last week.
SHARe does not have a physical location. While Bertenthal will be able to complete some work from home, she will primarily work in the field, meeting with families and community partners.
She sees part of her role as taking on some of “the more cumbersome and bureaucratic tasks,” such as assisting refugees and asylum seekers in signing up for health benefits and wrangling legal documents. With Bertenthal onboard, volunteers can focus on helping newcomers feel at home by introducing them to neighbors and connecting them to children’s programs.
SHARe is currently working with the Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit organization No One Left Behind, which supports Afghans who worked directly with the U.S. military and are now settling in the states. SHARe is helping one such family who arrived in the Upper Valley last month.
“We’re hopeful that we’re going to be accepting more families through this partnership,” Bertenthal said.
She expects it will become harder, however, for people to settle in the U.S. as the Trump administration introduces policies to limit the number of refugees and asylum seekers allowed into the country.
It will also become harder for those already settled to access services, Bertenthal said.
The president’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” which Congress recently approved, includes a measure that “immigrants — even those who came in legally — are no longer eligible for food stamps and support,” Bertenthal said. As a result, Bertenthal expects to have to address food insecurity within her first months at SHARe.
For more information about SHARe, including how to volunteer, visit https://sharevtnh.org/.
Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.
CORRECTION: The nonprofit organization Supporting and Helping Asylees and Refugees, known as SHARe, is based in Norwich. A previous version of this story gave an incorrect location for the nonprofit’s home base.
