Hailing from Haiti, Ermance Cyriaque has been in the United States for two decades, and her hard work as a shelf stocker at Walmart paid off as she recently moved into a house of her own in New London, Conn.
Hope Inc. (Housing Opportunities for People), a nonprofit that provides affordable housing for working-class people in Connecticut’s southern Middlesex County, purchased and renovated the home, then sold it to Cyriaque at a below-market price. The Hope Inc. program is geared toward low-income people that are well-equipped to stay in their homes, and Cyriaque was chosen because of her excellent credit.
New London’s neighborhood stabilization program contributed $34,000 so that HOPE could purchase the home. The organization has renovated 13 homes on the street where Cyriaque will live, and the houses will remain permanently affordable — even if their original owners sell them.
Cyriaque has been living with her daughter Annesylly and her nine-month-old grandson Zorienn Canuto in a three-bedroom apartment, struggling to make ends meet in a community where prices were outgrowing her retail wages. To qualify for the program, she had to earn no more than half the median annual income in the area for a family of two: $33,850. Annesylly, who also qualifies for the program, will rent the apartment attached to her mother’s house.
When the family saw their new home for the first time, the Ninigret Quilters Guild presented Cyriaque with a hand-pieced quilt to make it cozy. (The Rhode Island quilters frequently donate their handiwork to needy families in the area.) According to Lee Howard of The Day, Kate Lamoureux, one of the quilters, tells Zorienn, “I hope it becomes your favorite blankie.”
Meanwhile, Ermance Cyriaque had a gift of her own to give. She gave Marilyn Graham, the Executive Director of HOPE, a painting with the words Do What You Love. “You went over and beyond to take care of us and help us out,” Annesylly says of Graham.
Of Howard, Graham says, “Theirs is a nice American dream story.”
And it comes wrapped in a warm, new quilt.
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Tag: immigrants
For More Than 100 Years, This House Has Been Welcoming New Americans
Neighborhood House in west St. Paul, Minn. has come a long way since Russian immigrants in the area built a simple wooden structure in 1897. First opened to give newcomers the support and information they needed to make their way in this country, Neighborhood House now has a bigger and fancier home and the immigrants it serves come from different countries than they did 117 years ago. But the nonprofit’s mission remains the same.
Neighborhood House supports immigrants of every kind — from struggling newcomers who rely on its food pantry, family crisis center and refugee resettlement services, to people striving to become educated and advance their careers. It also offers a free preschool for the children of immigrants and an after-school program for teens that teaches them about health, education and careers and encourages them to engage in community service. But that’s not all. The center also provides health programs, gang-prevention activities, English language classes and GED prep courses.
Over the years, people from about 40 countries have benefitted from Neighborhood House’s services.
Nancy Brady, president of Neighborhood House, tells Angela Davis of CBS Minnesota, “Our mission at Neighborhood House is to help people gain the knowledge, the skills and the confidence that they need to overcome whatever the challenges are that they’re facing in their life — and move forward.”
The nonprofit’s three-year-old college access program is already changing lives — providing scholarships to adults of all ages who want to attend college. “Year one, nine people went to college,” Brady says. “Last year, 61 of our participants went to college. That’s how we measure success.”
Neighborhood House is funded through donations from its community, and for more than 100 years, residents in St. Paul have considered it a worthy investment. “We want to help people dream,” Brady says, “and then work to make their dreams come true, and to help all people see a positive future.”
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The Mobile Health Clinic That’s Been Helping the Poor for 40 Years
In 1976, Dr. Augusto Ortiz and his wife Martha looked to a donated school bus as a means to achieve their dream of providing free medical care to the poor of Tucson, Ariz.
Today, The University of Arizona Mobile Health Program (MHP) visits communities in a big, shiny trailer stocked with all the amenities of a regular health clinic — including an EKG — but the spirit behind it remains the same 40 years later.
The MHP makes regular rounds of communities in southern Arizona, serving about 2,400 uninsured and under-insured people, plus those that don’t have regular access to health facilities. Additionally, since 2003, the MHP has run group prenatal care appointments for expectant mothers, serving many who would never have received the important care otherwise and resulting in the delivery of more than 200 healthy babies.
Still, for all the poor that have been helped by the MHP, the impact on doctors-in-training may even be greater. The clinic is staffed with medical residents and students in public health, pre-med and pre-dental programs at the University of Arizona. Tammie Bassford, head of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University, tells Linda Valdez of AZ Central, “It has a profound impact on students.”
Bassford recalls one time when MHP staffers asked a patient if she needed any help with anything besides her health. She told them that she lacked a pot big enough to cook beans for everyone in her family. The MHP was happy to provide her with one.
Dr. Ortiz died at age 90 in 2007, but his wife Martha, now 90, is still involved in fundraising for the mobile health clinic that they founded. She believes in helping the poor for purposes of altruism, but also for the practical reason of preventing the spread of disease. “If somebody is standing next to you in the grocery line and coughing, it’s possible they have tuberculosis, and don’t know because they can’t get to a doctor,” she tells Valdez.
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How Digging in the Dirt Improves the Health of Immigrants in America
As anyone who’s traveled to a foreign country can attest, food can vary greatly from land to land.
So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that when some immigrants move to America, their health declines because they don’t have access to the fresh produce that enriched their diets in their native country.
In rural western Colorado, a unique program is solving this problem by helping immigrants learn English while they grow healthy food for their families — and it’s giving the farmer who hosts them some new notions about what crops to grow, too.
In the town of Delta, immigrants from countries including Mexico and Myanmar who sign up for ESL classes learn about a program at the Thistle Whistle Farm, located near Hotchkiss, Colo., about 45 minutes away. The immigrants help out at the farm and in doing so, get tips on how to cultivate and grow their own food. Plus, they can practice their English writing skills while taking notes on gardening techniques.
Their ESL and farming teacher, Chrys Bailey, tells Laura Palmisano of KVNF, “A lot of what has brought them to the program is that they are noticing that their families and themselves are beginning to suffer from health issues that they had not suffered from before and they are making the connection that some of their food choices are not serving them.”
Some students bring their children to Thistle Whistle to help out, filling idle summer hours with a productive and fun activity. “My kids enjoy coming to the farm and they like it because they learn about plants and how to grow some vegetables,” Yadira Rivera tells Palmisano.
The participants then take their new found gardening skills back home, planting their own vegetables, even if the only space they have is a couple of pots.
The program, which has run for three years through a grant from the Colorado Health Foundation, needs funding to continue.
Meanwhile, Mark Waltermire, the owner of Thistle Whistle Farm, has benefitted from the program too. “They’ve suggested or requested I grow a lot of vegetables and herbs I haven’t heard or tried before and I’ve been introduced to all sorts of fun, new varieties and fun new vegetables that I would otherwise not have been exposed to. So it has changed my diet too. I eat all sorts of things that I previously never knew about.”
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Why Every American Should Read Harry Potter
Can reading a fantasy story about a British kid with glasses who befriends half-giants, house elves, goblins and mudbloods (aka wizards whose parents have no powers themselves) lead to greater kindness toward minority groups facing discrimination?
Turns out, it can.
New research suggests that reading J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” books correlates with less prejudice among young people toward minority groups, including immigrants and homosexuals, and a greater ability to understand their perspectives.
The research comprised three separate studies. In the first, a team led by Loris Vezzali of the University of Modena gathered 34 Italian fifth graders and assessed them on their attitudes toward immigrants through a questionnaire. For six weeks, they met in groups of five or six with a researcher to discuss passages from “Harry Potter.”
Some groups read passages pertaining to prejudice, while others read sections about a different topic. After that, researchers interviewed the kids about the extent of their Pottermania (to determine how many of the books they’d read and movies they’d seen) and asked whether or not they identified with Harry and wanted to be like him. Kids who identified with Harry and read passages pertaining to prejudice showed “improved attitudes toward immigrants,” the researchers write.
Another study found that high school students who identified with Harry (as opposed to the villian Voldemort) were less likely to show prejudice against gay people. And a third study focusing on college students in England discovered that those who did not relate to Voldemort were more likely to have accepting attitudes toward immigrants.
So in the melting pot that is America, it’s easy to use these findings to make our country a little bit better. After all, these studies demonstrate that we don’t need magic to reduce prejudice and racism and increase empathy. Instead, all that’s required is a library card (and a magical wizard to read about).
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From the Boardroom to the Farm: Meet the Woman Helping African Refugees Make a Living Off the Earth
With its downtown high rises housing global oil companies, and its vast, sprawling suburbs that can only be reached by navigating packed freeways and dizzying highway overpasses, Houston does not seem to be a place where a farmer could find a quiet corner to coax a harvest from the soil. But thanks to the unlikely partnership between a co-founder of a software company with nary a notion about gardening and a small group of African refugees with deep roots in the Congo’s fertile soil, several small urban farms are flourishing — bringing hope and joy to the immigrants and fresh produce to their neighbors.
Plant It Forward was established by Teresa OʼDonnell, co-founder of Bridgeway Software, who says, following the success of her company, she was “looking for a means to give back to the community.” The group’s genesis was sparked by a story in the Houston Chronicle about the problem some Iraqi refugees (many of them doctors and engineers) were having finding jobs. “I thought it would be a good fit,” O’Donnell says. So she contacted Catholic Charities, a major worldwide force in refugee resettlement efforts. They implied that helping these Iraqi professionals settle was not much of a challenge compared to the giant problems facing immigrants with few skills.
Houston is the number one refugee destination in the United States, according to the U.S. State Department. Some 70,000 immigrants from 78 countries have settled in the Texas metropolitan area since 1978 — many drawn to its healthy economy and low housing prices.
To help make her aware of their needs, Catholic Charities suggested she accompany a volunteer that was meeting refugees at Houstonʼs international airport. “It was a seminal moment,” she says. OʼDonnell watched as nine people disembarked, “all wearing the same shoes, carrying the same bags, all wearing a name tag and all unable to speak English…I thought, ʻOh my god! They don’t have a chance.ʼ” From that moment she was committed to find a way to help.
MORE: It Wasn’t Easy to Welcome 25,000 Refugees, But Boy, Is This Town Glad It Did
Many of Houston’s African refugees arrive from the war-torn African Republic of Congo-Brazzaville where the earth yields so-called “blood diamonds” and rare metals used to manufacture smartphones and tablets. That same land is blanketed with some of the world’s most fertile soil — a happy circumstance for its multitude of poor citizens. O’Donnell learned that many of the refugees farmed small plots in their home countries, giving her the notion that perhaps they could make a living or get some economic benefit from urban farming.
After meeting with local pioneers in the urban farming movement, O’Donnell set up Plant It Forward, a training program that helps refugees farm crops suitable to the Houston climate (including taking advantage of the region’s two-harvest-a-year cycle) and develop sales skills.
In May 2012, the program leased three acres on the campus of the University of St. Thomas, and later that year, the first class graduated. Now, the organization has increased in size from one to three urban farms (the other two are located at a local church and at a large community garden site) and in scope — including additional classes in urban gardening and business skills. And for the first time ever, this year’s group includes several women, which is particularly important given that female African refugees have a hard time finding jobs due to their lack of English language skills and little educational history, O’Donnell says.
Initially, Plant It Forward aimed to help supplement the income refugees earned by working menial jobs like janitorial services. But it became apparent that, due to the program’s success, some could develop an urban farming business that would provide their entire income. By farming small plots — around two or three acres — and setting up weekly vegetable and fruit stands, several graduates of the program have been able to live off the land and develop a solid, profitable relationships with customers who look forward to the weekly harvests.
One of Plant it Forward’s stars is Sarment (his last name withheld because many refugees harbor understandable fears given their traumatic history). The 51-year-old is a native of Congo-Brazzaville where he had worked as a taxi driver before fleeing and becoming a refugee in neighboring Gabon for 10 years.
“I left the Congo because of the war,” Sarment says through an interpreter. “I left and went to Gabon,” he says. “They told me that I couldn’t drive a taxi because I was a stranger…I made a garden there. In Gabon, I had three people who worked with me in my garden. I was the boss. My garden there was 150 square meters. I mostly grew tomatoes. I also grew eggplant, peppers, cucumbers, sorelle, roselle [hibiscus]. We would sell the vegetables at the market,” he explains.
His garden was a success, but one day, “the military came and said you can’t stay here — if you stay, I will kill you. If I kept farming, they would put me in jail or kill me. I was the boss, so I was in danger, not my workers. After that, the United Nations said it was not safe for me, so they sent me to America.” On Feb. 22, 2010, Sarment, his wife and family arrived in Houston.
In May 2013, Sarment graduated from Plant It Forward’s agricultural program and now operates his one-acre farm in Westbury, a suburb of southwest Houston. He is what the program dubs an “independent farmer,” earning his full income from the produce that he grows. (According to OʼDonnell, independent farmers can gross $30,ooo to 40,000 a year or more in the program.)
Life is good for Sarment now. He and his wife recently welcomed their sixth child — a baby boy — and also his first grandchild. He is taking English language classes and practices with customers at the weekly farm stand sales. “I can work with my family to build my farm and go home and all is good,” he says. “Language is hard — [but farm] work, for me, no problem. I can say itʼs all okay for me in the garden.”
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As for his future? “Iʼd like to stay in America. I’d like for my project with farming to grow. I want to stay here, not return to my country. For me — I need my family and my farm. Today this work is small like this. And tomorrow,” he says opening his arms up wide and grinning, “it will be big!”
OʼDonnell, who works full time as the director of Plant It Forward, has big dreams, too. She is working to lease more land and has met with city leaders not just in Houston, but also other cities to explain the concept.
Houston’s neighborhoods have proved enthusiastic about having access to fresh produce, which Plant it Forward sells at stands located at its three farms and at the city’s Urban Harvest Eastside Farmers’ Market on the weekends. The organization also offers a farm share program that delivers its goods to homes on a subscription basis, and O’Donnell is also working to deliver produce from the farms to local chefs.
More so than anything, O’Donnell is excited about the success of this community-building program, which connects her “pioneer farmers” to empty land “that was just being mowed every week” — satisfying “the huge demand for local food.”
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Setting Politics Aside, Americans Are Stepping Up to Help Migrant Kids
A new Gallup Poll finds that the issue of immigration has become the number one national concern of Americans. And while there’s no legislative solution in sight to cope with the massive influx of refugee children fleeing Central American gang violence and arriving in the states that border Mexico, individuals across the country are putting partisan issues aside in the face of this humanitarian crisis, coming up with ways to help.
In San Francisco, 17-year-old high school student Julia Tognotti has been working tirelessly to collect clothing for the detained children ever since she saw a documentary on the crisis in her Spanish class last May. After school recessed for summer vacation, she traveled to Nogales, Texas, and volunteered in a shelter for the migrant kids.
“I talked to a boy there on the first day named Brian. He was 17 and I’m 17 and he was from Honduras and it took him two months to get to Mexico and he took seven trains. And I was so surprised to hear this because it really made me think, ‘could I do this?'” she told Sergio Quintana of ABC 7 News San Francisco.
Tognotti has collected two loads of clothes to send to Nogales and is planning to continue her work, accepting donations in Brisbane, California. She also hopes to organize a trip to the border for more teenagers to learn about the issue. Julia’s father David Tognotti told Quintana that the family doesn’t want to get “tangled up in the politics of the issue,” they just want to help the kids.
“We have a 17-year-old that’s trying to do what she believes is right to help people and it would be great if we could help support her.”
Meanwhile, the Hispanic Heritage Foundation (HHF), a Washington, D.C.-based national organization promoting Latino leadership, organized a trip for concerned people to volunteer at a refugee shelter run by Sacred Heart Church in McAllen, Texas. Actress America Ferrara, best known as the title character in “Ugly Betty,” joined the mission, reading books to the kids. HHF has also donated clothes, toys, books, and tablet computers.
In New York, La Casa Azul Bookstore is coordinating a book drive to supply migrant kids who arrive at shelters in the New York City area with free reading material. They’re looking for new and gently-used books in Spanish for kids and are offering a 10 percent discount to anyone who buys such books at their store. La Casa Azul will collect the books through August 10 and personally deliver them to children and teenagers in need.
As the actions of these caring Americans demonstrate, we don’t have to wait for government action before we reach out to help another human being.
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What’s Helping More Refugees Than Ever Build Businesses in Colorado?
In many states across the country, the economy is picking up after the long recession, making aspiring entrepreneurs eager to launch their small businesses. The only problem? Requirements for loans from traditional banks are still strict, leaving potential business owners, including many immigrants who may not have the credentials banks are looking for, with no capital to start their ventures.
In Colorado, the solution to this crunch has come through several microloan nonprofits that are able to lend smaller amounts than commercial banks do, and serve a wider variety of people, including refugees who want to open shops, home childcare businesses and restaurants.
Denver-based Somali refugee Abdullahi Shongolo was one beneficiary of these programs. Three years ago, a microloan enabled him to buy an international grocery store, leaving him with a rosy view of his adopted country. “If you try, this is America—you can,” Shongolo told Thad Moore of the Denver Post. “This is the country that went to the moon, man.”
According to Moore, microlending is booming in Colorado. Community Enterprise Development Services, a lender specializing in helping immigrants and refugees, increased the number of borrowers in the most recent fiscal year by 150 percent. None of the 51 loans the nonprofit has made since it opened in 2010 has defaulted.
“Refugees do not only bring a few bags of clothes and a few belongings,” Suleyman Abbgero, who used a microloan to open a coffee kiosk in an Aurora mall, told Moore. “They also bring a lot of ideas. If they are given the opportunity, they can do much more.”
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Why Public Markets Are So Important
Who doesn’t love a public market?
After all, they provide a great opportunity to buy local food, expanding your culinary tastes in the process. But despite our adoration for these markets, we may not realize the full impact they have on the people working the booth. Elijah Anderson, a Yale sociologist, coined Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market a “cosmopolitan canopy” because it is a place of equal opportunity for all genders and ethnicities. Philadelphia is not alone, though, as public markets across the country give everyone the chance to succeed.
Public markets are on the rise again, as noted by Project for Public Spaces (PPS), who found that the number of farmer’s markets increased from 2,863 in 2000 to 7,175 in 2011. The rise can be attributed partly to the help of organizations that assist in linking farmers with land — many of whom are minorities.
FARMroots is one such group. Since its formation in 2000, it has been connecting Latin American immigrants with land in New York State. Recently, they have expanded into the city, supporting urban farms, a growing industry. This is possible through partnerships with Black Urban Group and second-career farms, which are run mainly by women. In addition to minorities, women are also new titans in the sustainable agricultural business. So far this year, FARMroots has helped raise and market 20 new farm businesses.
Further, farmers are also doing business with SNAP (supplemental nutrition assistance program) customers, resulting in increased small business development and food access.
These initiatives aren’t limited to just the Northeast though. PPS has recently been working with a Hmong population in Missouri. Originally from Minnesota, the transition was rough due to a different growing season and less interest in Asian foods. However, with the help of a grant from the Kellogg Foundation through PPS, these Hmong farmers have been given another chance, with a grant that allowed them to participate in training sessions — resulting in sales increases ranging from 200 to 800 percent.
Although these minority and women farmers may experience some discrimination, overall public markets give them the chance to expand their businesses and improve their lives. Therefore, next time you drop by a farmer’s market, realize that not only are you helping yourself, but you are benefiting the lives of those selling to you, too.
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From Field Hands to Farmers: This Program Helps Latino Immigrants Become Land Owners
When asked what they want to be when they grow up, many little boys say that they want to be farmers. But when those small men become full-grown ones, a career in agriculture is often far from their minds.
That’s precisely the problem facing Minnesota. Those who own the state’s 69,000 farms are aging — averaging 56.6 years old — and many of their children aren’t interested in continuing the family business.
At the same time, more Latino immigrants than ever before are flocking to the state, and many of them would love to own their own farms, but they lack the necessary capital to purchase land.
It’s precisely these two demographic trends that inspired Ramon Leon, the CEO of the Latino Economic Development Center (LEDC) in Minneapolis, to find a way to help low-wage Latino workers become farmers.
Leon has experience in transforming the lives of low-wage immigrants. According to Tom Meersman of the Star Tribune, Leon’s organization has already helped many people previously employed as dishwashers and drivers become business owners. And three years ago, the LEDC established a training course for prospective farmers, provided them with loans, and set up Latino farming cooperatives, such as the Agua Gorda co-op (named after the Mexican town that many meatpacking workers in Long Prairie, Minnesota come from).
“There are a lot of Latino workers in agriculture that aspire to be farm owners if they had a chance,” John Flory of the LEDC told Meersman. “The question is what model can we use to bring them from being low-wage agricultural workers to having an opportunity to be a farm owner.”
The workers in the co-op keep their day jobs while farming rented fields on evenings and weekends. The first year, each member contributed $250 and all together, the group took out a $5,400 loan. They sold $7,000 worth of produce (including peppers, tomatoes, melons, and cucumbers), and eventually were able to expand their acreage and their sales to $40,000 last year. Their main focus? Developing connections in the community so that they can sell all of the produce they grow.
Many of the immigrants find that as their work roots them to the Minnesota soil, long-time residents are becoming more accepting of them. “When you go to communities the people start seeing you there working so hard, and they give you some respect,” Jaime Villalaz, business development specialist for the LEDC told Meersman. “They start thinking of us as good people.”
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