If you see a neon sign on a storefront reading “cambio de cheques” (check cashing), you probably think it’s just like any other check-cashing and payday loan purveyor out there.
But while the Community Trust Prospera in East San Jose, California, is situated in a strip mall next to a beauty shop (like many other check-cashing joints), it’s anything but your typical check-to-cash operation.
The Community Trust Prospera is actually a credit union, offering its patrons (many of which are Latino) much more than just quick access to greenbacks. It provides patrons the opportunity to build their credit.
Many immigrants conduct their lives on a cash-only basis, steering clear of intimidating banks. Last year, the National Council of La Raza estimated that 20 percent of Latinos in America don’t use banks, a higher rate of bank avoidance than what is found among any other group.
In response, Self-Help Federal Credit Union has opened six branches including Community Trust Prospera in San Jose and Los Angeles to try to reach some of these underserved communities. These branches now boast 11,000 members, who have socked away a whopping $1.3 million in savings.
Community Trust Prospera offers many of the same services that check-cashing and payday loan establishments do, but without the oft-typical predatory interest rates and fees. Alexia Fernández Campbell of National Journal spoke to Darwin Morán, who uses the financial institution to wire money to his family in El Salvador and to cash checks from his landscaping work. Initially, he resisted opening a bank account, but the staff there finally convinced him to.
“I started to become friends with them and slowly I started to change my mind,” Morán told Fernández Campbell. “Fixing my credit and paying my debts was so important to me,” he said.
Improved credit and a bank account gives low-income people a greater ability to rent an apartment. And taking advantage of programs such as Community Trust Prospera’s Fresh Start Loan (which is a type of loan that requires a deposit), eliminates the need to visit payday lenders — yet another important step towards establishing a more secure financial future.
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Tag: immigrants
Bringing Bhutanese Village Life to Refugees in New Hampshire
Getting down and dirty in the garden offers a multitude of health benefits.
And now, a community garden in Concord, New Hampshire is helping Bhutanese refugees with homesickness by recreating the village atmosphere they miss.
Ghana Khatiwada, a translator fluent in Nepali and English who works as a cultural liasion for the garden, told Megan Doyle of the Concord Monitor, “To them, it’s like a home feeling to come here and work in a garden,” she said.
The Sycamore Field Community Garden charges only $15 for a plot each season, so even the most impoverished refugees can participate. Organizers give away free seedlings to the immigrants.
While all this sounds great, it isn’t problem free. Each year, there’s a giant waiting list for the 138 garden plots available; this season, 70 families entered a lottery for the four open slots.
The lucky winners of plots emerge from the growing season well-fed, with extra cash in their pockets. “We are saving a lot of money,” gardener Ghana Khatiwada told Doyle. “In the winter, we spent a lot of money on vegetables like tomatoes, okra, eggplants.”
Ideally, garden manager Cheryl Bourassa would expand the garden, but she’s limited due to the amount of available water. To increase the number of plots, the nonprofit, which relies on grants and donations for its funding, would have to dig a new well — at a cost of $15,000. So recently, they filmed a video of the bustling activity in the garden to feature on Faithify, a crowdfunding website that will launch next month. Lea Smith, who shot the video, told Doyle, “Maybe somebody in Idaho will be inspired to help refugee farmers in Concord, New Hampshire.”
It’s clear that the atmosphere in The Sycamore Field Community Gardens is worth sustaining. Bourassa told Doyle that in the summer when the plants are burgeoning and the gardeners are there to tend them, “It’s almost like a little social club. It’s this real sense of life in a village.”
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Texas Lawyers Provide Free Help to Young Undocumented Immigrants
Many young undocumented immigrants brought to America as kids live in a kind of suspended animation — with everything from college to jobs to medical care to driver’s licenses put on hold by their legal status.
Under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy, such young adults can apply for temporary permission to work, go to school, all the while not worrying about being deported. DACA doesn’t provide a pathway to eventual citizenship as the DREAM Act would if it were ever to pass, but the policy still allows these youth to progress in their lives, go to college, and start careers.
Registering for DACA it isn’t easy, however. Applicants must be younger than 31 years of age (as of June 15). Plus, they must provide proof of continuous residency in the United States. Which could be a problem for some immigrants if they started working after high school and took a job that paid in cash because of their lack of a Social Security number — leaving a gap in their records.
That’s why a group of immigration attorneys in Texas will be offering free legal help to DACA-eligible people on June 5 and 6 at the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) in San Antonio.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, Texas has 210,000 immigrant residents eligible for DACA, the second highest of any state. (California has the most.) Immigration attorney Alex Garza of RAICES told Dana Choi of the Standard-Times in San Angelo that the nonprofit is trying to find and help as many of those people as it can. “We are actually coming out to the towns and counties so (people who might be eligible for DACA) don’t have to travel all the way out to San Antonio for legal assistance.”
Johana Deleón is one young Texan that RAICES helped apply for DACA; she was approved back in March. Now Deleón is studying for her driving test and was recently accepted into Texas A&M, where she will attend if she can find enough financial aid.
The challenges she faces as she continues her education are considerable, but she’s ready. “You can start at the bottom and work your way up,” she told Choi. “We work hard to get where we are, so I don’t think it’ll be much of a problem for us.”
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When Jobs Are Tight, Immigrants Turn to Microbusiness Incubators
For many workers, the recent economic downturn either forced or inspired them to finally strike out and start the business that they’ve always dreamed of. And that is especially true for many immigrants who may lack education, English skills, or the dependable transportation they need to succeed in the traditional — and still tough — job market.
Paula Asuncion of Portland, Oregon is one such newly-minted entrepreneur. Asuncion immigrated from Mexico decades ago, and since then, held a variety of low-wage, fast-food and farm jobs to support her six children — a burden that grew more difficult after her husband’s death.
But two years ago, she started participating in a program sponsored by Hacienda CDC (Community Development Corporation), a Portland nonprofit that provides housing, education, and economic advancement help for Latinos. Hacienda CDC sponsored a microbusiness incubator that trained Asuncion and others on the ins-and-outs of entrepreneurship.
Now, Asuncion runs her own catering business and was able to buy a home rather than sharing a crowded apartment with other families as she used to.
Janet Hamada, the executive director of Next Door Inc., another Portland-area nonprofit that offers business training told Gosia Wozniacka of the Associated Press, “The biggest concern among immigrants is having stable work. They come to us and say, ‘I want to start a taco stand. How do I do that?'”
People like Asuncion and those who want to open taco stands, for instance, form a major part of the American economy. According to the Association for Enterprise Opportunity, microbusinesses with five or fewer workers employ 26 million Americans.
The nonprofit Adelante Mujeres in Forest Grove, Oregon, which offers a ten-week microbusiness class for Latinos, has seen a surge in interest from those who want to start their own businesses. Program director Eduardo Corona told Wozniacka,”Anti-immigration laws have led to people having a really hard time finding jobs, even on farms. Since they have to put food on the table, they’re starting to explore their abilities and thinking of opening a business.”
Interestingly, numerous studies have shown that immigrants are more likely than native-born Americans to start their own businesses. One report found that more than half of Silicon Valley tech start-ups were founded by immigrants.
And now with the help of these increasingly popular nonprofit business incubators for low-income people, we’re likely to see even more successful immigrant entrepreneurs in every sector, from tacos to technology.
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These Teen Newcomers Help Fellow Non-English Speakers Adapt
Immigrant children often help out their parents in ways most American kids could never imagine — serving as interpreters in interactions with English speakers and helping to make sense of bills and forms.
High school senior Yuling Chen is one such kid. Five years ago, Chen came to the United States with her family from China. Since arriving in America, she has always helped her family with the language that she was quicker to pick up. “When I go home, they all hand me a big stack of letters to read,” she told Chris Burrell of The Patriot Ledger.
But she doesn’t mind. “When I first came to the United States, my English wasn’t so good at all, and I wanted to help (the elderly) with their lives,” she said. Chen is one of a group of 235 Asian immigrant teenagers in Quincy, Massachusetts that are taking this assistance to the next level, volunteering to help elderly immigrants at Quincy Asian Resources.
Along with the other teens, Chen teach seniors how to use computers, help middle school students making the transition to America, and assist at the Lunar New Year party and August Moon Festival, among many other duties.
Peter Tam, a Quincy native, first came to the center in 2007 as an AmeriCorps volunteer; now he directs the youth programs, involving volunteers from both of Quincy’s public high schools. “We’re really looking to create the next generation of Asian-American leaders and recent immigrant leaders in the community,” Tam told Burrell.
To thank the teens for their hard work, Quincy Asian Resources awarded seven of them, including Chen, a college scholarship worth $1,000.
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Neighborhood Centers Provide New Immigrants an Instant Community
When moving to a new country, finding and gathering everything you need is a daunting, if not almost impossible, task. For immigrants that arrive in Texas, there’s a place that can help them with anything: Neighborhood Centers.
This nonprofit, which was founded in 1907, runs 74 centers in 60 Texas counties, offering everything a newcomer to America needs to get on his or her feet. According to the Associated Press, in 2012, Neighborhood Centers estimates that it helped 400,000 people. In Houston, it offers vital services to a city where 2.5 percent of all naturalized immigrants in America choose to make their homes, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Neighborhood Centers offer everything from after-school programs and fitness classes to job-search assistance, tax preparation and citizenship application help. One perennial favorite is its busy schedule of English classes, which include daytime courses to accommodate the needs of stay-at-home moms.
On the nonprofit’s Baker-Ripley campus in Houston sits the Promise Credit Union, which allows patrons to open bank accounts without Social Security cards or federal work permits — easing the immigrants’ distrust of financial institutions and giving them a safe place to store their money.
The nonprofit also runs a charter school and a welcome center that have been credited with revitalizing some low-income apartment complexes in southwest Houston. They run a thrift store — the Bumblebee Shop — serving as a classroom for patrons who want to find jobs in retail. Workers learn to handle the accounting, inventory, and work schedules. The shop sells items donated by the community, and it’s a good place for people to find affordable clothes for kids, too.
Neighborhood Centers host a knitting group that involves immigrant women in crafting scarves, hats, and other clothing and accessories that they can sell. One of the unifying themes of their programs? To help patrons find ways to make a living even though they don’t have a college degree or perfect English skills.
Often, immigrants start out receiving help from Neighborhood Centers, then return later on as volunteers to help the next wave of newcomers.
Bruce Katz, the vice president of the Brookings Institution, told Dug Begley of the Associated Press, “I think what places need is a vision. There is no lacking capital in the United States. None … What’s needed, and what (Neighborhood Centers) is doing, is putting vision to capital.”
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Young Women in Technology Band Together in Texas to Succeed
Latina women have a hard road sometimes when it comes to pioneering careers in the tech industry.
They comprise only 1 percent of college students enrolled in engineering nationally, according to the Dallas Morning News. They can be outnumbered two to one by men in classes for some disciplines.
Students at the Singley Academy in Irving, Texas, take care of their own by offering a much-needed peer support group, Girls for Technology, for young women trying to make their way through the lucrative but male-dominated career path.
The club is a model for how banding together could help girls break into the ranks of science and tech careers — and demonstrate the different, and valuable, viewpoints young women bring to the table.
Singley Academy’s Assistant Principal Kacy Barton, who helped start Girls of Technology, told Avi Selk of the Dallas Morning News, “Females think differently. The guys get wrapped up in the technical side. ‘How are we going to make this work?’ Girls tend to respond to things they see changing the world around them.”
Lesly Hernandez, a senior, wants to work for NASA someday. Hernandez spent part of her childhood in Mexico while her parents worked in the United States. She now lives with her single mother, a food court manager, and a 6-year-old brother she looks after while her mom works. She’s also her household’s repairwoman.
Another club member, Rubi Garcia, showed early signs of science prowess when she smashed her Barbie radio — and then repaired it.
Supporting each other has given the young women confidence as they prepare for college. Women are essential, Barton says, because they think differently.
A man might say, “‘Let’s …do something else.’ And one of the girls reaches over and says, ‘If we just do these two steps, we’ll get this accomplished.'”
Leave it to a young woman to figure out how to engineer something simply.
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7 Summer Supercamps You’ll Wish Were Around When You Were a Kid
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It Wasn’t Easy to Welcome 25,000 Refugees, But Boy, Is This Town Glad It Did
In the 1980’s, 25,000 Cambodian refugees poured into Lowell, Massachusetts, escaping the killing fields of Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime, but putting pressure on Lowell’s public schools and social services. Former City Manager James Campbell told the Lowell Sun that accommodating the needs of so many poor and non-English-speaking people was a “logistical nightmare.” But boy is Lowell glad it welcomed them.
The city built more schools and implemented bilingual programs to educate the refugee children. In return, the Cambodians settled down in the community and thrived. Campbell said that today there are 350 Asian-owned businesses in Lowell that provide jobs to people of all ethnicities. The Cambodian community also started the annual Southeast Asian Water Festival, which has become a major event in Lowell, and have shared their culture with the town in countless other ways.
Over the next few months, Lowell is taking a moment to look back on its history with Cambodian immigrants, and reflect on the arrival of more recent immigrants from such places as Iraq and Burma, through a special exhibit, “Lowell: A City of Refugees, a Community of Citizens.”
Highlights of the exhibit include stories kids wrote and pictures they drew shortly after they arrived, about the atrocities they’d faced in Cambodia. One boy wrote about how when he was five, the Khmer Rouge tied up his sister in the woods and left her to die, until one soldier spared her. The exhibit is dedicated to Dorothea Tsapatsaris, a teacher who worked with many refugees in the 80’s and preserved their work, much of which tells the story of their daily lives in Cambodia.
An interactive map tracks the immigrants’ movements from Cambodia to refugee camps to Lowell, and the exhibit tells the story of the city’s history as it welcomed its newcomers. Referring to that massive ’80s influx of refugees, Dorothea’s husband George Tsapatsaris, who was the Superintendent of Schools back then, said, “We slowly began to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and today the Cambodian population is an integral part of our community and our schools.”
Over the last two years, 400 new refugee children have come to Lowell, and because Lowell is learning from its own history of immigration through this exhibit, many see this as a sign that the cycle of American renewal in one city has begun again.
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In Vermont, These Adorable Animals Give Some New Americans the Taste of Home
Vermont farmers who raise goats for milk have no use for the male babies their animals produce, and often ended up euthanizing them. Meanwhile, immigrants to Vermont from Africa and Southeast Asia were importing thousands of goats a year from Australia and New Zealand to use in preparing familiar dishes from their home countries. These two facts made a light bulb go off in the head of Karen Freudenberger, who volunteers with refugee communities and conservation groups.
One day when she was mentoring a Somali family, Freudenberger noticed that an older man named Mohamed seemed depressed. She asked him if he’d ever kept animals, and he immediately began telling her about his days raising goats, camels, and cows in his home country. “His eyes just lit up, and he was a different person. It hit me harder than any day since…what a hugely important piece of people’s lives is missing when they come here,” she told Kathryn Flagg of Seven Days.
Working with two immigrant goat farmers from Bhutan, Freudenberger formed the Vermont Goat Collaborative in Colchester, Vermont two years ago. She contacted goat dairy farmers, many of whom were glad to supply the project with kids. The farmers raise the baby goats until they are big enough to eat, and then immigrant families come to the farm to pick out the animals they want to buy, which is a lot more convenient than the trek to Boston many Vermont immigrants were making to find goat meat. Last year they sold 100 goats to immigrants from 15 different countries.
Several groups have come together to support the project, including the Vermont Land Trust, which supplied the farmland that was too flood-prone for crops but perfect for grazing, the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, and Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, which gave the collaborative a $20,000 grant to pay for fencing and feed.
“The whole project is really designed around trying to meet this particular niche demand that this community has…in a way that meets the particular cultural and taste desires of their communities,” Freudenberger told Lisa Rathke of the Portland Press Herald. Meanwhile, it’s making the farming dreams of some new Americans come true. “I never thought, when I lived in Nepal, that I could be a farmer in America,” Chuda Dhaurali, one of the goat farmers involved in the project told Flagg.
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