In his blue suit and red tie, John Purnell has the appearance of any well-groomed business owner.  The father of seven has recently been able to utilize  his business skills to serve a unique demographic.

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In the basement of his Provo, Utah office building is a small room lined with computers. A closet stuffed with donated supplies such as paper towels stands open. A sign on the door reads Refugee Action Network.

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Purnell founded Refugee Action Network after the General Authorities of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints extended a call to church members to serve and reach out to the needs of refugees in their areas. Purnell quickly realized that, though many people in Utah Valley wanted to serve refugees, with most of Utah's resettlement agencies and government subsidized housing in Salt Lake City, it was difficult to find avenues to help.

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“With the church encouraging its members to really participate, and get engaged at a community level, it becomes problematic if you have hundreds of thousands of members here in Utah Valley but they don’t have a meaningful way to connect with, support, and make a profound, personal impact on refugees,” he said. “So, recognizing that that was a void, we really needed to find a way to connect needs with the capacity and that’s what was the emphasis.”

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The non-profit targets refugees who have already settled in Utah Valley and helps to integrate them into the community through allowing them to learn skills which will help improve the quality of their lives, enabling self-sufficiency.

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Purnell explained that Refugee Action Network pairs a refugee family with five families who live in their neighborhood. The families provide temporal needs for the refugees for a set time-period so that they can focus on improving their language and job skills. The families also provide friendship to the refugees and essentially take them in as their own.

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Students in Provo who aren’t in the financial situation to serve in this capacity can help by providing friendship and mentoring said Purnell. Students might teach piano or tutor refugees.

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The program lasts 15 weeks and Purnell is currently waiting to see how the first round of refugees will be affected.

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As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints with a large family, Purnell may not seem unique in a setting like Provo. However, having grown up with a father who worked in International Agricultural Development, Purnell spent much of his youth living in foreign lands. He described himself as a “global nomad,” and said he has experienced what it’s like to be a stranger.

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“ I’m well-acquainted with the notion of being the exception, the person who doesn’t fit the mold,” Purnell said. “I was always the new kid, always the red-head, always the Mormon, always the American or Canadian. Whatever was not typical for the area, I experienced many times over.”

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The main obstacle to self-sufficiency, according to Purnell, is the language barrier.

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“If you don’t have have an adequate command of the language in the host country wherever that may be, then your opportunities are going to be very limited,” he said. “In particular, your opportunities for education, for employment, and entrepreneurship- those three are all paths to self-sufficiency. But they’re all equally constrained if you don’t have a command of English.

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This aim of Refugee Action Network is to give refugees a time where they don’t need to focus on providing for their physical needs. Instead, they can focus on improving their English and other skills which will make them more marketable. They can also learn English while engaging and building friendships with their host families. In this way, Purnell says the program’s aim is consistent with the gospel.

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“We have this notion of when I was a stranger, you took me in, not when I was a stranger you found me a place on the wrong side of town where I visit you from time to time,” he said. “How do you take someone in, love them, make them as if they are one of your own and accept them as one of your own?”