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The Somali refugee presence in Minnesota owes much to the strong voluntary agencies (VOLAGs) in this Midwestern state. These organizations sponsor and assist refugee resettlement programs. A combination of the very strong Minnesota economy in the early 1990s (with unemployment dipping to around 2 percent in the late 1990s, the lowest rate in the whole country 19) and the presence of the robust refugee assistance network largely explain the Somali concentration in Minnesota. Cawo M. Abdi, University of Minnesota https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/bildhaan/vol11/iss1/12/

VOLAG, sometimes spelled Volag or VolAg, is an abbreviation for "Voluntary Agency". This term refers to any of the nine U.S. private agencies and one state agency that have cooperative agreements with the State Department to provide reception and placement services for refugees arriving in the United States.[1] [2] These agencies use funding from the State Department's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) along with self-generated resources to provide refugees with a range of services including sponsorship, initial housing, food and clothing, orientation and counseling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VOLAG