ST. LOUIS COUNTY — As the country began to prepare for the arrival of Ukrainians fleeing the Russian invasion, a local nonprofit organization spent the weekend working on the St. Louis welcome mat.

New Life Evangelistic Center volunteers kicked off their cleanup of part of a donated home in northern St. Louis County on Saturday, as pastors told reporters they hoped to have 100 homes for newcomers Ukrainians over the next few years.

“We see the need,” Pastor Chris Aaron Rice said, “and we want to help in any way we can.”

The region will need all the help it can get as it prepares for a new wave of refugees fleeing war around the world.

President Joe Biden announced on Thursday that the United States would accept 100,000 Ukrainians under various programs. And a senior official with the International Institute of St. Louis, the region’s largest resettlement agency, said he expected to see some here.

“We are preparing,” said Arrey Obenson, president and CEO of the institute. “We have the ability.”

The institute will also continue to resettle refugees from Afghanistan, who were evacuated from that country in the fall after the fall of the US-backed government, said Arindam Kar, chairman of the board of trustees of the institute. institute.

More than 700 people have arrived here so far, Kar said, and the institute is starting to hear of Afghans resettled elsewhere who may want to move.

It will take some time for the number of Ukrainian arrivals to catch up. The Biden administration is still working out the details to bring as many people to the United States. But the State Department will soon begin contacting resettlement agencies to see what they can handle, and Obenson said his organization could accommodate 1,000 this year.

Rice, the pastor of New Life, said he has a meeting scheduled with the institute this week to talk about the complementarity of these efforts.

New Life has already prepared a two-bedroom house in North County. The workers cleaned the floors, changed the stove and fixed the problems with the basement and the roof. “Now it’s ready for a family,” Rice said.

The center has yet to do plumbing and carpentry work on the one-bedroom house the volunteers were cleaning on Saturday, but Rice said it will eventually be suitable for a couple or a mother with children.

The plan is to offer the houses to the refugees rent-free for six months, to give them time to find jobs and start saving money. If they like the homes and want to stay, New Life will ask them to make small monthly payments to pay off the cost of renovations, said the Reverend Larry Rice, grandfather of Chris Aaron Rice and founder of New Life.

Larry Rice said he hopes the effort will yield 10 homes in its first year. His organization could use more volunteers, especially skilled labourers, to help prepare the houses and will also need furniture and food donations when the refugees arrive.

New Life is also looking for more people to donate houses. Larry Rice said he already had a few people “considering” the idea a lot.