Three staff members from the Interreligious Council’s Refugee Resettlement Program spoke, bringing with them several women who came originally from Somalia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hope Wallis, Director<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Hope said that the resettlement program has two important facets.\nThey are responsible for welcoming refugees and helping them to settle\ninto their new community, specifically with helping them with\nhousing, employment, language and education. The program also has an\nadvocacy role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hope said that the public tends to think of any immigrant as a refugee,\nbut that a refugee is defined specifically as someone who has proved to the UN\nand the US that they have been, or face a credible fear or being, a victim of\nserious persecution because of their national origin, religion, ethnicity,\npolitical opinions or membership in a particular social group. There are over\n13 million refugees worldwide with another 22 million displaced people still\nresiding in their own countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Interreligous Council of Central New York has field offices in\nSchenectady, Binghamton and Ithaca. It has a very diverse staff, many\nof whom are former refugees who have gone through the resettlement process and\nthus have the language and experiential background to help others. The IRC\nprogram has settled people from many countries, with the largest groups this\nyear coming from the Sudan, Somalia, Bosnia, the Ukraine and Cuba. The most\nrecent group has been Liberians, with expectations of a group of around\n300 Somalia-Bantu people arriving, pending implementation of the October\n2004 directive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Hope said that people like us can help by sponsoring refugees through\nour faith communities or other groups. We can invite speakers from the IRC. We\ncan donate goods and money and we can speak out against anti-refugee,\nanti-immigrant sentiment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Mariam Gedow, a native of Somalia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Mariam is currently on the staff of the Refugee Resettlement Program and\nspoke from the perspective of a person who had been resettled in the US. Mariam\ncame to Syracuse in September 2000. A graduate of Somalia University in 1986,\nshe received a Masters Degree in Economics in Italy. In 1989, she returned to\nSomalia and in 1990 when many people were forced to flee, she stayed in\norder to help others. She served as a translator with international agencies\nwhere her skill with Italian was especially useful. In 1995, the warlords would\nnot allow women to work, so she went to a refugee camp in Kenya, where there\nwas a great deal of violence. She then went to Pakistan where she worked\nhelping women organize and advocate before the UN. She was in Pakistan for two\nyears before coming to the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She spoke of the psychological stress that she and other refugee women\nface. Everything is different, including the climate, the food and the\nlanguage. The women have lost their home, their country and their extended\nfamily and in some cases, their husbands. Unlike in Somalia, in the US the\nwomen are expected to start working outside the home very quickly and become\nheads of the household. Five months after moving to Syracuse, Mariam started\nworking with the Refugee Program. She hopes eventually to continue her work in\nEconomics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Marty\nNicholas, Senior Case Manager<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Marty oversees the work of several other case managers. She said that\nCatholic Charities also settles refugees in our area and that Jewish Family\nServices was doing it until recently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Like Hope, Marty stressed the important role of religious and other\ngroups who contract with the IRC to act as sponsors. The sponsoring group\nwelcomes the refugees into the community by setting up their home, meeting them\nat the airport, providing friendship and orienting them to the community,\nproviding transportation to medical and dental appointments, etc. There is\nusually help also from a small group of the refugees’ countrymen who have\nalready resettled, but these people are very busy adjusting and do not have the\nresources needed to sponsor someone else; Americans are very necessary to the process.\nHelp is provided every step of the way by IRC’s case managers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Refugees face many challenges. The biggest challenge is that they will\nbe living in a poverty situation when they first come. Jobs are very scarce\nand wages are low; there is a lack of affordable housing; and refugees\noften do not have money management skills. Loneliness and depression often\nset in. Having received inadequate health and dental care, there are often\nmedical concerns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, with the challenges come many joys. Refugee families have great\nstrength and courage and a strong will to survive. It is an\nenergy-producing experience for sponsoring groups. Marty characterizes it as\n“a faith experience lived out in a practical way.” Sponsors need to\nbe open and flexible with the ability to “ride the waves.” They need\na compassionate spirit, patience and the willingness to listen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In response to questions that followed the presentations, the speakers\nmentioned the importance of the Federal program under the Syracuse City School\nDistrict which provides job development skills and English as a Second Language\nclasses. Refugees benefit greatly from 1:1 tutoring through Literacy\nVolunteers. Training in ESL tutoring is provided twice a year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Staff members at the Center for New Americans described how they work with refugees arriving in Syracuse, helping them with housing, employment, language and education and advocating on their behalf. Volunteers are always needed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":8002,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[23,46],"class_list":["post-7847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-programs","tag-advocacy","tag-new-americans-2",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7847"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8972,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7847\/revisions\/8972"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/8002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}