SAVE THE DATE!!
The Literacy Coalition of Colorado
Volunteer Training
For new and returning volunteers
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Workshops begin at 8:30 am
Focus Point Family Resource Center
2501 East 48th Avenue
Denver, CO 80216
But when she finishes, when she gets through scratching out all five letters of her first and last name combined, something magical happens. I give her a thumbs up and say "Good job!" words she doesn't actually understand the meaning of, and there is a sparkle in her eye - a sense of academic accomplishment that I have to remind myself every week she never got as a little girl. For her, these are the same steps I took as a kindergartner. But she doesn't seem upset that it took her much longer. Like her fellow countrywomen, she is steadfast - even stoic.
Volunteers: Is your student from Bhutan? If so, Denver's Bhutanese community would like to help you learn a bit about Hindu culture by sharing some core cultural values and traditions.
Griego: A refugee in Colorado finally reunited with his family after years of waiting
Something new and quite exciting is coming to Emily Griffith Technical College this fall: Emily's Coffee. This full-featured coffee shop will be a real-life learning lab for refugee students. The shop will offer a full selection of coffee drinks, including espresso, latte, and cappuccino.
Nepal's camps who pass their time reading scriptures and chatting with each other, 99-year-old Bishnu Maya Bharati grabs her refugee identity card and visits the UN refugee agency's office every now and then, asking about her resettlement case.
The centenarian, believed to be the oldest refugee in Zambia, was in an exuberant mood during his landmark birthday party last Friday in the Mayukwayukwa refugee settlement. He even joined in the singing after advising well wishers that the best way to reach old age was to take care of your health.
Mercy Housing’s Resident Services Team is looking for an After School and Summer Program Manager at Grace Apartments (in Denver). Experience with Refugee Youth highly desired. Full time, benefited position.Refugees in Focus
A film festival commemorating World Refugee Day
Three days, seven films, ten million stories
All films will be shown at Emily Griffith Technical College in downtown Denver. The roster includes the new documentary, Welcome to Shelbyville, as well as six other films that explore refugee issues both in the U.S. and abroad.
Watch. Think. Discuss.
For event details and full listing of the films scheduled, please click here to visit our website.
Yet nobody who works in eastern Myanmar, where most of the refugees would have to go back to, believes that the conditions remotely exist for their safe return. Indeed, the region gives the lie to the notion that the country really is making ASEAN’s “steady progress” towards the sunny uplands of democracy and peace.To read more, visit the Website.
For a start, the low-level guerrilla war that has rumbled on between small groups of armed Karen and the Myanmar army has if anything got nastier since the election. The Thailand Burma Border Consortium, the main NGO looking after the refugees, estimates that conflict has made a further 70,000 people homeless in Kayin (formerly Karen) state in the past year, with 113 villages cleared. Often, the army orders villagers off their land to allow for mining, logging and other resource exploitation. In all, Burmese who have been internally displaced are reckoned to number over 500,000. In the past few weeks hundreds more have been fleeing over the border.
photo: corbis, The Economist
Photo: Don Duncan, PBS
About 100,000 refugees from Bhutan have been living in U.N.-run refugee camps in eastern Nepal since the early 1990s. Many of these ethnic Nepalese are in the process of being resettled in other countries, but a few hard-liners are looking to return to Bhutan -- even through force. Click here for the story and slideshow.
VOLUNTEERS, KEEP THIS IN MIND: SOMEONE IS COUNTING ON YOU
DEAR ABBY: I am a volunteer manager coordinating services between 200 students and tutors in an adult refugee English as a Second Language program. We benefit greatly from the skills and perspectives of young people, but the job requires volunteers to be self-directed and mature enough to handle the assignment. May I offer some advice to those who wish to volunteer for any program for class credit -- as an intern or during summer vacation?
Kristen Damron understands the Chinese proverb that "women hold up half the sky." She also knows that refugee women have a particularly challenging situation ahead of them when they are resettled in the United States. Kristen is the Women's Programs Coordinator for Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services (LIRS) in Denver.
In her work, Kristen sees that refugee women are expected--by their families and by their communities--to keep up with their roles as homemakers, mothers, and wives while also facing the often incredibly difficult challenges that resettlement brings. Kristen stated that, "Women are a marginalized population, regardless of which community they're in. They have a number of disadvantages. Within the refugee population, they're the backbone to a household and are tasked with raising the kids, running the household, as well as getting a job. They are the key to the family's success in the U.S., even if the family doesn't realize that. The greater the woman's success, the greater the chances of her family's success."
Women are less likely to take time for themselves and to take care of their own needs, even though they would benefit from support during the resettlement process. In many cultures, men don't share in child care or housekeeping responsibilities, and this means that women's adjustment and familiarity with a new culture may lag. Within the Colorado Refugee Network, the in-home ESL tutoring program is one program that strives to address some of the issues of isolation and language deficiency that refugee women may face. This program, however, addresses the issues one woman at a time, but can't build a support system within each ethnic community.
LIRS offers several programs specifically to support and empower refugee women. According to Kristen Damron, "The programs are designed to be supportive, holistic, and empowering for the women. They're supportive in that women are often somewhat excluded from integration into American society because of language, education, social barriers, and family responsibilities. Our programs give these women a way to come together and support each other. The programs include financial literacy, WorkStyles for women (a job readiness course), community support groups, a microenterprise program that also partners with A Little Something (the Denver Refugee Women's Crafts Initiative), and most recently, a health awareness and education program.
In the financial literacy program, a partnership with Emily Griffith Opportunity School, the group talks about the basics of household finances and money (in general) in the United States. The women's care groups bring together women from the same ethnic community for gatherings at the apartment complexes where the women live. They learn about their rights and responsibilities in the United States, they discuss topics related to domestic violence and personal safety, and they work on life skills, but also build supportive relationships with each other over the course of the sessions. To see a group in action, take a look at the video posted here.
Currently, the Women's Care Groups are in need of volunteers. Volunteers can provide transportation for the women who live at sites other than where the gatherings take place. Volunteers are also needed to work with the community leaders in helping to lead their groups. Two volunteers work with each group. Right now there are four groups, but Kristen hopes to expand that to at least eight in order to accommodate more participants.
Later this spring, Kristen will launch the first Women's Health Walk and Fair in Cheesman Park in Denver on Saturday, May 14. According to Kristen, "We wanted to create a special event to commemorate National Women's Health Week. We wanted our event to to be special and to celebrate these women, their health, and their importance in their families, and we wanted to do that in a way that would bring the rest of the community--what we call the "receiving community" together with these newcomers. We also wanted to create a way to help these women see that they're valued and their health and their bodies are valued. We also want the women themselves to be involved with and excited about the event and the concepts we're presenting.
The Women's Health Walk and Fair is free and will feature guest speakers, health education information, cultural offerings, nutrition information, and yoga in the park. Volunteers are needed to help with the event, especially those with a background in healthcare. Also, Kristen had hoped to provide event T-shirts for the participants, but there is no funding for that. A donation of event T-shirts would be gratefully accepted!
If you would like to volunteer at this event or with a Women's Care Group, please contact Kristen Damron at kristen.damron@lfsco.org.
Kristen said that volunteering isn't the only way to help refugees have a better resettlement experience. "Really, the first thing people can do for refugees is to be friendly. Smile, have enough guts to start a conversation--even if you're waiting in line, go ahead and strike up a conversation--and don't be afraid to have a welcoming demeanor. Just starting that conversation will make someone very happy because you've acknowledged that they are here and they are included."
--SM
Fatuma Ali is one of our orignal class members--and she still attends, every week. Fatuma hasn't had an easy time of it here, but despite that, she has always been diligent about making sure her children value education--something she, herself, has never had. She also has taught them the value of hard work--in school, at home, and working the land.
In 1994, Hadidja Nyiransekuye was witness to and a survivor of the Rwandan genocide that lasted 100 days and claimed the lives of nearly one million people. Hadidja immigrated to the United States in 1998 with her children, and from that time, experienced the refugee resettlement process both as a participant and as an observer. Her memoir not only recounts the details of surviving a life caught up in the currents of change, but also takes a frank look at the politics, intentions and outcomes of stateside resettlement efforts.
Hadidja went on to earn her MSW and Ph.D. from the University of Denver, and currently teaches at the Metropolitan State College of Denver.
She will discuss and sign her memoir, The Lances Were Looking Down: One Woman’s Path through the Rwandan Genocide to Life in the States at the Tattered Cover's LoDo location on Thursday, March 3. To request a signed copy of the book, email books@tatteredcover.com
To learn more about Hadidja Nyiransekuye, click here.
You probably don't give much thought to the mail--in general--or the mail that comes to your house. If you've come to the U.S. from a country where there is no structured mail system, though, this daily delivery can seem like both a miracle and a baffling mystery.
For our students who are not literate or who haven't yet learned to read using a different alphabet, sorting through the mail can be a frustrating challenge. Your student thinks, Maybe it's all important. Maybe none of it is important. It might not even be for me. What do I do with it now that I have it?
In our busy, modern lives, mail can sometimes feel like just one more thing to deal with, but I'll bet that when you shuffle through the bills and junk mail, your curiosity is piqued by a hand-addressed piece of personal mail. It will likely be the first thing you open because it's special just by the nature of being part of a personal connection. This program is all about personal connections.
