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Posts Tagged ‘immigrant’

Affordable Housing plus Urban Garden

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 29, 2016| 2 Comments »

A certain community organization that believes in the importance of affordable housing also believes in the importance of community. That is why it fosters numerous community-building initiatives, including the new Sankofa farm and market.

Leigh Vincola at ecoRI reports from Providence.

“If you have traveled around the city’s West End this winter, you may have noticed a number of buildings going up rather quickly. Wondering what they are and who they belong to?

“The answer is Sankofa, a Ghanaian word meaning to go back, get what is yours and make positive progress in the future. The Sankofa Initiative of the West Elmwood Housing Development Corporation (WEHDC) is doing just this.

“The initiative was born in 2011, when the WEHDC completed an extensive survey of West End residents that determined their primary concerns centered around health and food. In a predominately low-income neighborhood — 32.5 percent of households live below the poverty level — the survey determined that for many the West End is a food-insecure neighborhood. There isn’t enough access to fresh food, and particularly food that is culturally relevant to the immigrant populations that make up the community, primarily Central American, West African and Southeast Asian. …

“Sankofa is a response to these needs, and has three main elements: an affordable housing development, a large-scale community garden and a weekly World Market. The $15 million project is funded by Rhode Island Housing and work is underway on all aspects.” Read up on the amazing range of positive efforts here.

According to the market’s Facebook page, things will get going for spring with a “pop-up market May 7th, from 12pm to 4pm at Knight Memorial Library on Elmwood Ave. There will be art, bath and hair products, handmade jewelry, homemade candles, fresh food, FREE seeds, henna, giant bubbles and much more.”

Photo: Sankofa Initiative
The Sankofa World Market is a local farmers market with international flavor.

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Some Germans Open Homes to Refugees

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 9, 2016| 2 Comments »

Germans who open their homes to refugees don’t necessarily think of it as that big of a  deal.

Josie Le Blond writes for UNHCR Tracks, “Wael and Ibrahim sleep in their hosts’ home offices, while Homam and Samira are sharing an artist’s home studio. Mohamad has his own room, and Mecid’s large family has been given an entire house to call their own. …

“Ibrahim, a 29-year-old Syrian seeking asylum in Europe, has slotted easily into the lives of his German hosts, Maximilian and Carolin. The couple, both journalists, offered him their spare room when they heard he was having a hard time finding accommodations in Berlin.

“ ‘I met Max when he interviewed me for an article. He invited me to stay if I had any difficulties,’ says Ibrahim, who fled fighting last summer near his home in the Syrian port city of Latakia.

“After five months moving between emergency shelters in Germany, Ibrahim was told he had to find a hostel. But an administrative problem meant he quickly found himself without a roof over his head. Ibrahim remembered Maximilian’s offer.

“What we’re doing is the least we could do.”

“ ‘It’s unbelievable, really. If it weren’t for volunteers offering their places, many people might be out on the streets,’ says Maximilian, 29. ‘What we’re doing is the least we could do. We have a three room apartment – it’s easy.’ …

“Weeks later, Maximilian and Carolin now view Ibrahim just like any other lodger. ‘At this point I don’t see Ibrahim as a refugee that is staying at our place,’ says Maximilian. ‘He’s more like a flatmate who joins us for football every Monday.’ ”

More here.

Photo: UNHCR/Ivor Prickett
Max and Carolin offered their spare room to Ibrahim, an asylum-seeker from Syria, after he struggled to find somewhere to stay in Berlin.

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Refugees Making Granola

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 11, 2015| 4 Comments »

Photo: David Wells

A wonderful organization, the Providence Granola Project, has just received some well-deserved attention in the food magazine Edible Rhody. In fact the magazine has prepared a short video that says it all, here.

Nancy Kirsch writes, “Established in 2008, Providence Granola, now part of Beautiful Day (a nonprofit organization founded in 2012), has a three-fold mission, says Providence Granola co-founder Keith Cooper: Provide job training for immigrants in Rhode Island who are unlikely to otherwise find gainful employment, and educate community members about refugees and refugee resettlement, all by making and selling delicious artisanal granola.

“Cooper and his lean professional staff, including Anne Dombrofski, director of strategic partnerships, work out of the Social Enterprise Greenhouse, a co-working space in Davol Square in Providence. …

“Hand labor is done by a small team at Amos House, a soup kitchen and comprehensive social service agency in Providence. …

“The trainees are immigrants—often, but not always, refugees—who have come recently to the United States. They attend classes at the Dorcas International Institute of Rhode Island (Dorcas) and, through its assessment process, have been identified as less likely to find employment within the next year, given their lack of first-language literacy and absence of English skills.

“ ‘If we can speed up someone’s entry into the job market from a year or more to between three and six months … there’s a huge benefit,’ says Cooper.”

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Wealthy Mexicans in New York Helping Countrymen

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on November 23, 2015| Leave a Comment »

I learn some really cool things from the Christian Science Monitor. (I’m on their listserv for stories about people helping people, the CMS Change Agent newsletter.)

A recent newsletter highlighted an initiative by successful Mexicans living in New York who have decided to offer practical support to poor immigrants from their homeland.

Tyler J. Kelly writes, “The view from Carlos Valverde’s 38th-floor office tells a story by itself – New York stretching below, the mighty skyscrapers of the World Trade Center rising all around.

“Mr. Valverde is the construction manager of the World Trade Center’s Tower Three, responsible for 2 million square feet of real estate, and the vista from his office is, in many ways, the realized vision of many immigrants’ dreams.

“From Brooklyn’s workaday Sunset Park, however, the view is quite different. There, at classes put on by a nonprofit, the Mixteca Organization, six to eight immigrants sit in folding chairs around plastic tables struggling to spell tarea, Spanish for ‘homework,’ or trying to understand the concept of the hundreds’ place in math. …

“In Mexican culture – both in Mexico and here in New York – there’s little tradition of people bridging these two worlds. But that is changing. Valverde is part of a slowly growing effort to bring the resources of New York’s Mexican-American 1 percent to bear on the problems of the 99 percent.

“The benefits for the immigrant community here are plain. Edgar Morales, for one, has gone from being a construction worker to getting a college education paid for by a Mexican philanthropist. He’s now a computer science major with dreams of interning at Google or Microsoft.

“But it has also changed Valverde, who volunteers at Mixteca in Sunset Park, and others like him. In Mexico, the wealthy travel with bodyguards and live in houses surrounded by electrified wire; in the US, some are reaching and gaining a new perspective.

“After spending hours talking with clients about every conceivable detail of an elevator’s interior, Valverde says, ‘I go to Sunset Park and talk to a graduate [at Mixteca] who just finished English 3 and is a baker.’

“Compared with the baker’s reality, he says, the elevator issues seem ‘minute, minuscule.’ ”

More here.

Photo: Ann Hermes/Christian Science Monitor
Carlos Valverde (standing outside 3 World Trade Center in New York) helps new, less affluent Mexican immigrants go to school and find work.

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Sharing Your Farm with Immigrant Farmers

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 8, 2015| Leave a Comment »

A Lancaster, Massachusetts, woman who came to the country at age 12 without a word of English is giving back by helping immigrants get a start in farming — and her model is being picked up around the nation.

Jane Dornbusch at the Boston Globe writes, “Maria Moreira, 62, is fond of the proverb ‘Necessity is the mother of invention.’ When her kids were small and she and her husband had a dairy farm in this Central Massachusetts town, she had plenty of milk, hungry kids to feed, and a need to make a little money.

“So she started a business making a soft Portuguese cheese — she calls it simply Portuguese fresh cheese — that reflected her roots in the Azores, where she was born.

“That was in 1986. A year earlier, she had seen another need, and, in her own inventive way, she’d set about meeting it. Moreira and her husband, Manny, had a 70-acre field, not far from their farm, that they used to grow corn.

“A Hmong woman, an immigrant from Laos, approached Moreira about using a small corner of the field to grow her own crops. Soon, word spread, and little by little the entire field was given over to immigrant farmers, each in charge of his or her own plot. Today, says Moreira, 275 farmers are growing more than 75 kinds of vegetables at what is now called Flats Mentor Farm. …

“Gus Schumacher, former Massachusetts commissioner of food and agriculture, came to know Moreira’s work when he served as a USDA undersecretary in the late ’90s. He notes that she was among a handful of leaders — others included John Ogonowski (one of the pilots killed on 9/11) and Jennifer Hashley, of New Entry Sustainable Farming Project — supporting refugees and immigrants in establishing themselves as farmers and market gardeners. It’s a movement that has since gained momentum nationally, he says. ‘But it all started in Massachusetts.’ ”

More at the Globe, here.

Photo: Joanne Rathe/Globe Staff
Maria Moreira, of Flats Mentor Farm, holds some lemon basil.

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Volunteering with Refugees

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 2, 2015| 6 Comments »

Yesterday, as part of my organization’s participation in the United Way Community Care Day, several of us chose to volunteer in the Jewish Vocational Service’s refugee employment program. This service helps refugees learn basic English and works with local employers like Legal Sea Foods and Pret a Manger to find the immigrants jobs in four months. They have 80 percent job-placement success and more than 90 percent job retention after several months.

Each of the volunteers had a reason to be interested in this particular opportunity as opposed to, say, painting a day-care classroom or weeding in a community garden. One guy had lived in Germany for three years and knew what it was like not to understand the local language. Two women had parents who had been immigrants. Two other volunteers were naturalized citizens and had experienced challenges being an immigrant. In my case, I edit articles on low-income immigrant issues as one of the topics we cover where I work, and I am related to immigrants.

We were assigned either to a classroom where people spoke no English (and may not even have learned to read and write in their home country) or to a classroom where people had a little English. I was directed to a table of three adult learners in the latter classroom. The teacher gave me small cards with questions such as: What is your name? What is your favorite movie? What do you do on the weekend? How many people in your family?

We proceeded to get to know each other through these questions. The students asked me questions, too.

Then the teacher provided worksheets about the kind of things it is OK and not OK to talk about at work or to do in an interview. The worksheets also discussed body language in interviews. We practiced interviewing for a job.

Other staff showed up from time to time, reminding me of being in a hospital, where someone pops in to take your blood pressure and someone else suddenly arrives to check your chart or ask if you want to talk to a social worker. The people popping in at JVS were staff members focused on employment. A young man told my three students that on Saturday the restaurant Pret a Manger would be hiring people and did anyone want to come? He said it is a very supportive partner company. He noted that one person doesn’t eat pork and was able to ascertain that she wouldn’t want to work there as she might have to handle pork. She was a Christian from Ethiopia, and I found the prohibition against pork intriguing, especially has she later mentioned that she likes wine. The other woman said she would come Saturday. The man didn’t have his work papers yet, but another staff member popped in to help him take care of that.

Later, that student said I had helped him a lot and hoped I would come back again. All the volunteers had a wonderful time and are trying to figure out when they can volunteer again, although we will have to do it on our own time.

Photo: Jewish Vocational Service

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Write Why You Should Be President

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 24, 2015| 2 Comments »

Thomas Whaley, a teacher of 7-year-old English-language learners on Long Island came up with a creative way to build confidence while building writing skills. He has students make the case for why they should be president.

Jasmine Garsd reports at National Public Radio, “Whaley does not look like the kind of guy that dabbles in magic markers. Before he was a second-grade teacher, he worked at a public relations company in New York City.

“He says he started thinking about doing something else while riding to and from work on the Long Island Rail Road. ‘I would talk with people on the train at 6 a.m. and 8 p.m. on the way home,’ he recalls. ‘They were people who had a complete disconnect from the young people of the world. They were all so focused on adults and the rat race. And I realized that this was not for me.’

“That was 16 years ago. He has been teaching ever since.

“In addition, Whaley has found time to write a novel called Leaving Montana, and he’s starting to write children’s books. Last year, he won the New York state teacher-of-the-year award.

“This second-grade presidential campaign is an example of why. He tells me he got the idea when he asked the children one day to raise their hands if they thought they could never be a U.S. president.

“The answer broke his heart.

” ‘Almost every single child who is an English-language learner believed that they couldn’t be,’ Whaley recalls. They’d say things like, ‘ “I can’t run for president because my parents are from a different country.” That was a biggie. “Because I’m poor, and you need a lot of money to be the president.” “Because I don’t like to read, or I can’t read.” ‘

“Whaley says the presidential speech project is about more than just learning to read and speak in public. He wants these kids to learn to boast about themselves.

” ‘Bragging about yourself, and your best qualities,’ Whaley says, ‘is very difficult for a child who came into the classroom not feeling any confidence whatsoever to read three or four words.’

“Robert Epstein, the principal at Canaan Elementary, says this is the essence of what makes Whaley such a great teacher.

” ‘There’s a sense of community that’s really unsurpassed,’ and the students will take risks as a result, Epstein says. He adds that Whaley goes above and beyond what is expected of him as a teacher. ‘If one needs sneakers, I’ve seen him go out and buy sneakers. He’s gone to homes. He’s constantly on the phone, constantly emailing parents.’ ”

More at NPR.

Photo: Christopher Gregory for NPR
Thomas Whaley walks his students back to class from the library.

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Leveling the Playing Field

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 15, 2015| 4 Comments »

After work yesterday, I went with a colleague to observe a parent-engagement program organized by Lawrence Community Works (LCW) at the Oliver Partnership School, in Lawrence, Mass. I had long been interested in LCW’s use of circles to build a sense of community among strangers of very different backgrounds.

Lawrence is what is sometimes called a Gateway City, meaning it’s always been a gateway to the U.S. culture and experience for new waves of immigrants. It currently has a large Spanish-speaking Dominican population and foreign-born and native-born residents from all over.

The parent night was the third in a series. In the first two, facilitators had helped the participants to come up with agreed-upon ground rules (come on time, no cellphones, respectful attention to one another) and to choose an “obstacle” that they would like to address related to their children’s life at the school. They had selected recess, which is only 10 minutes. (Lunch is 15 minutes.)

Everything was conducted in both Spanish and English.

As the evening was getting going, Tony told me his children love school. He believes a good education is vital. He wishes he had more. He did learn Spanish and English in addition to his native Portuguese. The languages help him in his job working with troubled youth, a job he loves to go to every day.

In a warm-up exercise, we stood in a circle and stated our name, followed by our favorite fruit and the name and favorite fruit of everyone who spoke previously. It was fun and a great equalizing experience as anyone can be good at that and anyone can struggle with it. The people who went last had about 20 names and fruits to report and did really well despite language differences.

To discuss the recess issue, we separated into two groups — those who felt comfortable speaking English (which included the two teachers in attendance) and those who felt comfortable speaking Spanish. At the end we came together with the results of our investigation of three questions: why having a longer recess is important, why it might have been set up that way, and what parents themselves could do about it. (Asking the administration’s help was to wait for a joint meeting in June.)

I won’t make this post much longer, but I do want to say that I thought the way this was handled was very good. Parents appeared to feel that their opinions were welcome and that they could accomplish something. Continued engagement with them will be important as the work is a piece of a much bigger project by LCW that aims to help parents get skills for jobs. Unemployment is a serious issue in a city where many of the people are poor, have not had good educational opportunities, and are still learning English.

Photo: Family literacy night at the Oliver Partnership School in Lawrence, Mass.

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Female Muslim Superhero

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 16, 2014| Leave a Comment »

G. Willow Wilson, a convert to Islam, has created a female Muslim superhero for both educational and entertainment purposes. Abraham Riesman interviewed her at Vulture.com.

“G. Willow Wilson,” he writes, “has done something even Superman never bothered to do: create a female Muslim superhero and turn her into an overnight marketing sensation.

“Wilson writes Ms. Marvel, a monthly Marvel Comics series that debuted in February. It stars Kamala Khan, a 16-year-old child of Pakistani immigrants living in Jersey City …

“Kamala is a hero in the Peter Parker tradition: dweeby, self-doubting, unpopular. Like so many of today’s teen geeks, she spends her nights resenting her parents and writing fan fiction for online forums. A bizarre incident leaves Kamala with shapeshifting powers. …

“Born in New Jersey herself, Wilson was a white kid with no religious upbringing, but converted to Islam during the height of the War on Terror. She’s lived in Egypt, done foreign correspondence for the New York Times, penned a memoir, written an acclaimed novel, and labored in relative obscurity within the mainstream comics industry for years.”

Riesman asks Wilson, “What’s unique about writing a female Muslim superhero in 2014, as opposed to 10 or 20 years ago?”

Her response: “If we had written Ms. Marvel ten years ago, Kamala’s religion would probably have to be an even bigger part of the conversation than it is today, because closer to 9/11, there was a lot more scrutiny placed on the actions of everyday American Muslims. But today, now that there’s a bit of distance — particularly for the younger generation, for whom 9/11 happened when they were small children — there’s a greater desire to see more well-rounded stories. Being a Muslim is really only one part of her overall arc, her overall journey. …

“I write about real life as it is lived by the young American Muslim women that I’ve had the pleasure of meeting throughout the course of my travels as a writer and being able to speak in different places and meet different people at signings and things.”

Read more at Vulture, here, where you can also see a few panels from the comic strip.

Photo: Vulture

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A Lovely Movie

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 3, 2013| 4 Comments »

Got to share this movie: Le Havre (in French with subtitles).

Lately, nearly all the movies we see are on Netflix. Our taste seems to run to animation, documentaries, and foreign films. Not exclusively, but in general.

Last night we watched an odd, wistful comedy about an old guy in Le Havre,
France, who makes up his mind to help a boy whose family is arrested after being discovered in a packing crate near the harbor, on route from Africa to London.

Every shot in the film was like a painting, every gesture true. The characters were good-hearted, down-and-out types in the roughneck port, where many undocumented immigrants come looking for work. There they find squatter camps, deportation, kindness, hostility, drugs, poverty, crime, and sometimes a living.

The dialogue in the bar scenes reminded me of Mike Leigh films, the ones where he has his actors ad-lib their lines. It was just so funny and believable. And the “trendy” charity fundraiser the old guy arranges with the graying rock band has to be seen to be believed.

The “2011 comedy-drama film written and directed by Aki Kaurismäki, starring André Wilms, Kati Outinen, Jean-Pierre Darroussin and Blondin Miguel. It tells the story of a shoeshiner who tries to save an immigrant child in the French port city Le Havre. The film was produced by Kaurismäki’s Finnish company Sputnik …

“The film premiered in competition at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, where it received the FIPRESCI Prize. Kaurismäki envisions it as the first installment in a trilogy about life in port cities. His ambition is to make follow-ups set in Spain and Germany, shot in the local languages.”

More at Wikipedia, here.

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Refugees Learn to Cope with Snow

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 25, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Portland, Maine, has a reputation for being welcoming to immigrants and refugees. As a result, newcomers have been giving back, taking seriously their training in how to start a business, for example, hiring people, and boosting the city’s economy.

In this story by Jess Bidgood at the NY Times, we learn about Portland’s “class intended to help immigrants from warm countries cope with the cold.”

Bidgood writes about newcomers “squeezed into a plain conference room at the city’s center for refugee services … to be schooled in a central piece of Portland’s cultural curriculum for its growing population of new arrivals, many of whom are asylum-seekers from Central Africa: the art of handling a Maine winter.

“The instructor, Simeon Alloding, a human services counselor here, sat at the front of the room, ticking off winter’s many perils as clip art images of a penguin and an elephant decked out for cold weather hovered in a PowerPoint presentation behind him. ‘Everyone here has fallen, right?’ Mr. Alloding asked as he began a discussion on how to navigate the city’s icy sidewalks. ‘You don’t walk too fast, you don’t take long steps.’ …

“On this slushy morning, there were more attendees than could possibly find seating, and late arrivals clustered around the entrances to the room, many still wrapped in winter coats and hats despite the stifling heat of the room.”

The refugees help each other with translation, but some questions are hard to answer, like how to know what tomorrow’s weather might be.

“Miguel Chimukeno, from Angola, rose to ask a question in Portuguese, which another student translated to French, which the French interpreter, Eric Ndayizi, posed to Mr. Alloding.

“ ‘He’s low income — zero income — and you said they should watch TV and know some information. How does he get TV?’ Mr. Ndayizi asked.

“ ‘There’s nobody that’s going to issue out TV’s,’ Mr. Alloding said. ‘My only suggestion is that you talk to your neighbors.’ ”

More.

Photo: Craig Dilger for The New York Times

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Multicultural Standup

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 5, 2013| Leave a Comment »

The NY Times had an article today about the subtleties of standup comedy in different languages.

Not only can jokes get lost in translation, but an immigrant from one country may be completely hilarious to an immigrant from another country while falling flat with temporary visitors from his own country.

Sarah Maslin Nir writes, “In a city where a priest, an imam and a rabbi really could walk into a bar on any given day — along with just about anyone from around the globe — what different cultures laugh at is as diverse as the city itself. …

“Cultural stumbles are a theme in immigrant comedy in New York, said Oleg Boksner, a Brooklyn comedian who is preparing a one-man show called ‘From Russia With Laughs.’ In it he has fun with his heritage through caricatures like the transplant from Communist Russia who tries to join in with the American custom of Halloween, but  scares away trick-or-treaters with his Soviet-style treats: a raw potato and an onion. ‘I’ve had people from Mexico relate to it as well,’ Mr. Boksner said of his act, ‘because they relate to the difficulties of being an immigrant in one form or another.’

“But when he played before a crowd of Russian visitors at B. B. King Blues Club and Grill in Midtown a few years ago, those jokes bombed. …

“And every foreign comedian must tackle the thorny task of figuring out which jokes just will not translate. Take the Mexican one about the chicken who was the height of foolishness. Why? Because he was looking for a pencil when he was surrounded by pens! ‘Plumas’ in Spanish, means ‘pens’ but also, critical to the joke, ‘feathers.’ ”

More.

Photograph: Yana Paskova/NY Times
Ali Sultan, a Yemeni-American comedian who lives in Minnesota and performed at the Comic Strip in Manhattan last month, claims to have studied at the University of I’ll Just Google It.

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Hurricane Help from Day Laborers

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 24, 2012| 3 Comments »

I liked a Nov. 19 editorial in the NY Times: “Day Laborers, Helping Hands.” It shows that attitudes about immigration can be affected by circumstances.

“About 50 or so people gathered outside a storm-ruined taco restaurant on Saturday morning in Coney Island, on a backstreet behind the Boardwalk near the Wonder Wheel. They were day laborers, Hispanic men and women who have been spending weekends as a volunteer brigade, helping other people chip away at the mountains of debris and accepting nothing in return except work gloves, face masks and safety information cards from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. They came from all over the region, including a day labor hiring center in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, that Hurricane Sandy had washed away. …

“It’s not unusual to find day laborers looking for work after a disaster. What was striking was the warmth and gratitude they found. They even had an official welcome, from the local state assemblyman, Alec Brook-Krasny, and two City Council members — Domenic Recchia Jr. of Coney Island and Vincent Gentile of Bensonhurst.

“They thanked everyone for coming and pledged to get the Bensonhurst work center open again. A man from the laborers’ union gave a safety lecture. …  ‘We are all New Yorkers,’ said Mr. Recchia, who had brought a box of masks. An observer used to the anti-Latino screeds of politicians on Long Island, a few miles east, marveled at the sense of community — the feeling that after a disaster, immigration status didn’t matter, only a willingness to help.”

Although I took this photo in downtown Boston, the union mural seemed fitting, suggesting the importance of keeping fairness in mind after the crisis has passed.

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Granola Project Helps Refugees

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Suzanne knows what sorts of stories would be good for this blog. I love one that she passed along at Thanksgiving.

It’s by Elizabeth Rau at East Side Monthly, and it’s about a charitable effort to help refugees acclimate to a new life while working.

“The holidays are upon us. What to do?” asks Rau. “You can drop a ten-spot on useless things … or you can buy a bag of granola made here in Little Rhody.

“This wholesome, mostly organic granola is irresistible: It tastes good and is lovingly whipped up by refugees trying to start over in a country that can be intimidating and tough to figure out.

“The Providence Granola Project was founded by Keith Cooper and Geoff Gordon during a deep talk one night about how to help people who come to America with nothing more than a suitcase.

“Keith, a Yale graduate and former campus minister who lives with his family on the East Side, had one of those aha moments. He’d been making granola for years in his kitchen. Why not turn his hobby into a business and mobilize refugees too? The two friends shook hands. A company was born.

“That was five years ago, and Providence Granola is still going strong. In rented space at the Amos House soup kitchen in South Providence, the company makes 1,000 pounds of granola a month.  …

“For years, Keith worked at the International Institute of Rhode Island, settling refugees here. … Keith was moved by what he saw at the institute — dignified and hard working men and women who want to succeed. With so many obstacles in their way — no money, language barriers, a different culture — you’d expect them to give up. But they don’t.”

Granola has given many of these people a new start. Read more here. And here. Read especially about Zaid Wadia, a 35-year-old Iraqi refugee, determinedly upbeat and grateful despite a very tough past life.

Photograph: image by Ryan T. Conaty

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Medal of Freedom for Community Organizer, 82

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 8, 2012| Leave a Comment »

The president recently handed out the Medal of Freedom awards. Maybe in the excitement around around Bob Dylan, Toni Morrison, and John Glenn, you missed that Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers union, also was honored.

Fox News-Latino wrote, “The White House will present the lifelong unionist and immigrant rights advocate with the Medal of Freedom. …

“Huerta’s sense of justice developed from an early age. Raised in Stockton, Calif., Huerta watched her father work for little pay in the fields, while her mother managed a hotel that often let poor migrants stay for free, according to the Daily Beast.

“Along with César Chávez, Huerta founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962, which later evolved into the United Farm Workers of America. …

“Using strikes, marches, boycotts and hunger strikes, the UFW has defended the interests of farm workers. … Huerta has been arrested 22 times and been beaten for her activism.

Notwithstanding her run-ins with the law, Huerta has been influential in passing far-reaching legislation. Her accomplishments as a labor rights activist include helping pass California’s Agricultural Labor Relations Act of 1975 and helping secure disability insurance for California farmworkers. …

“Huerta launched the Dolores Huerta Foundation in 2002, with the mission of supporting community organizers and budding political leaders.” Read more.

Getty Images

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