BENNINGTON – In a one-story house a few blocks from downtown Bennington, Mary Jan spends several hours a week fashioning brightly colored yarn into winter scarves or bath mitts. Her hand-knit creations are sold at a couple of stores in the county.

Two days a week, she also works at a local food manufacturer, helping make packaged snacks.

Mary Jan, 35, is still getting used to earning an income. Until August of 2021, when her family fled Afghanistan, she’d been a stay-at-home wife and mother of three. Now, her part-time jobs fill some of her free time, but most importantly, they augment her husband’s salary as the family builds a new life in America.

“It’s really good that I can get some money out of this,” Mary Jan said of her knitting, speaking in Dari through an interpreter. “Because the U.S. is really expensive, one person cannot afford what a family needs.”

Her husband Mohammed, 45, is employed as a carpenter by an independent contractor in the county. He previously served as a security guard at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul for nearly a decade.