On April 26^th, more than 100 women leaders gathered from across the Region to hear the stories of “Ruth’s Journey: Building Communi-TEA.” This was a coming together of interfaith leaders with a discussion about the impact of immigration on women and their families.

Renee Chou, reporter/anchor for WRAL-TV, moderated the event, with key note speaker, Rev. Anne Hodges-Copple, Bishop Suffragan-Elect, Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina.

Flicka Bateman and Christine Wai’s story is one that shows how friendship can transcend age, culture, and other differences. Flicka had lived in the Chapel Hill area for over 30 years when a refugee family moved in across the street. Christine had grown up in a Thai refugee camp where persecutors had burned down her school three times, preventing her from learning and receiving an education.  Christine, a young teen raised in a Thai refugee camp, accepted all the mentoring Flicka offered.  Flicka not only tutored her in English, but gave her driving lessons (the description of which generated laughs from the speakers and audience), provided a part-time job as a dog-walker, and encouraged her to pursue a college education. Today, in her late-20’s, Christine has a degree in Chemistry and works for a research laboratory at UNC-CH.  These two are still growing together, as Flicka is studying the Karen language, that Christine Wai teaches at CHICLE, and they have visited Thai refugee camps together.

Vimala Rajendran, came to the United States with her new husband, 30 years ago. Three children later, she found herself in a physically and emotionally abusive relationship. Although she was prevented from working under her spousal visa, which posed barriers to her leaving her abusive relationship, she utilized this time to study, get involved in media, and become an activist for international peace. Once separated from her husband, Vimala and her children had a glimpse of true poverty. To overcome this struggle, she spent all of her time cooking favorite family recipes for donations. These community dinners proved to be the foundation for Vimala’s Curryblossom Café, a restaurant which pays its employees a living wage and is committed to feeding its community regardless of their ability to pay.

I was touched by these stories of strength and friendship and how we are more resilient when we work together. When women from the United States welcome refugees and immigrants, not only do they get the chance to learn about a new culture, but they gain friends who will partner to change our community for the better.

We will be hosting our own Communi-TEA here in Triad Region in the coming months.  Stay tuned to find out more.

Photos courtesy of N.C. Council of Churches.

In 2010, through the resilient advocacy of our friends at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, in particular the indomitable Rev. Virginia Herring, CWS was able to become the first host within the Congregational Nurses network to focus specifically on the refugee population. With Holy Trinity serving as the official partner, CWS has been tremendously blessed by the part time service of an amazing Congregational Nurse who works with our program 10hrs each week.

Though at the time, we were just thankful to have any one who could help guide us through the challenges of accessing the increasingly complex health care system, we didn’t know what we were getting when Maureen Flak was assigned to our program.

The daughter of Irish immigrants herself with several decades of experience as a Registered Nurse, Maureen and had lived and served in Cambodia, Japan and Thailand as well as here in the US. Her experience, however impressive, has taken a back seat however to the power of her personality. Maureen has shown tremendous compassion and dedication to her work with refugees here in Greensboro and she has backed that compassion with incredible gumption and tenacity. Maureen is not a woman who takes “no” as an answer. Not on the first try, or the second, or the third. Maureen has advocated on behalf of our client’s in their efforts to access appropriate health care in ways that have made doors open that would never have otherwise. She has truly made a lasting difference in the lives of so many.

And so, on behalf of all of our staff and all of our clients, we were thrilled to say “THANK YOU” to Maureen this month as we celebrated 3 years of service in with CWS. We have been so blessed by her spirit and expertise and can only hope for many more years with her by our side to come.

Since we began resettling refugees from Iraq, we have seen our clients face both subtle and maddeningly blatant discrimination. We have been asked politely by potential employers desperately in need of workers if we might just be willing to send applicants from another ethnicity. We have been told by others that folks are just not comfortable with “those types of people” on the work site. We have had clients face harassment in their apartment complexes, at their workplaces, and on the streets. We have felt angered, defeated and hugely disappointed in our fellow Americans at these times. And so on April 15th while we sent our thoughts and prayers to Boston, we saved some for us here in Greensboro.

We prayed for the true American spirit to prevail – the America that values people based on the content of their character rather than the color of their skin…or the spelling of their name, or the way they choose to pray. We prayed for the America that prizes diversity and individuality and that vehemently protects our freedom of religion. We prayed that those few among us who truly believe that more than 1.6 billion people can be judged upon the actions of a few, do not draw judgement on the rest of us, who know better. We prayed for an America that will come back from this tragedy stronger and truer to our own ideals – for an America that is as good as its promise.

More than a decade ago, in the wake of 9/11 when the nation was in upheaval and people across the country were turning against one another, the popular TV Show “The West Wing” aired a special episode addressing this issue. While on lock down in the White House with a group of touring high school students studying for the SATs, a White House Staffer is asked by a student “Why do Muslims want to kill us?” He responds by scrawling across the a chalk board an analogy like those on the SATs:

Islamic Radicals : Islam         as           The KKK : _____________

The answer here is Christianity, and the KKK could just as easily be swapped out with any number of groups and individuals who have committed atrocities in the name of a religion that forbids such acts. From the terrorist and self-proclaimed Christian Fundamentalist who killed 77 people, mostly youth, is Oslow in 2011 to the funeral protesters screaming messages of hate at Westboro Baptist, the actions of these people no more define the world’s more than 2 billion Christians, than the actions of these two brothers in Boston define the followers of Islam.

We know that the communities of Greensboro are made up of thousands of wonderful people who value and respect one another across all lines of race and faith. We have seen their kindness and generosity unfold in so many incredible ways over the years and we know that it is their American spirit that will ultimately carry our city forward. We hope that in the days and weeks and months ahead, those of us who would not judge one person on the actions of another, take a moment to make our voices louder than the few among us who would lash out at a new neighbor because when they call their mothers to tell them they’re safe after a bombing, they do it in Arabic.

What you need to know

Who:

To file for citizenship you must currently be a Legal Permanent Resident (green card holder) with five years residency (4 years, 9 months for refugees) or three years if applying through a US Citizen spouse.

When & Where:

Saturday, April 20th from 10am – 2pm at CWS Greensboro 620 S. Elm St. Suite 315, Greensboro NC 27406

Saturday, June 1st at St. Mary’s Church, 812 Duke St. Greensboro, NC 27401 (time tbd)

What to bring:

1. Permanent Resident Card (Green Card)

2. Two Passport Size Photos of Yourself

3. Federal Filing Fee of $680 in a Cashiers Check of Money Order made out to “US Department of Homeland Security” OR if you believe that you may be eligible for a fee waiver based on low income, please bring your Medicaid Card, Food Stamps, or SSI for eligibility screening.

4. List of the following for the past 5 years: all addresses where you have lived; all places you have been employed or attended school with dates; and all out of country trips you have taken with dates of travel.

5. Copy of Criminal Record (if applicable).

Please note: Your application cannot be filed without the above documentation. 

Contact Information:

For questions please contact CWS Greensboro Citizenship Program at 336-676-4223. All applications will be filed on a first come first serve basis. 

Se Habla Espanol 

Last fall, CWS partnered with Reading Connections and Nonprofit Votes to conduct voter registration, pledge forms, and voter education  in Guilford County. Together we were able to get 164 people to fill out voter registration or pledge forms, learn how to vote and how to research who to vote for, and encouraged them to vote. Nonprofit Votes tracked all of the people on our list and discovered that 145 out of 164 people on our list either voted early or on Election Day. According to this data, people that signed a pledge or registered to vote through CWS voted at an astonishing 88% rate in 2012! That’s far above the 68% turnout rate for NC as a whole. CWS is excited to hear about these results and wants to thank Reading Connections and Nonprofit Votes for their partnership with this project!

Today, the international holiday remains a major focal point for organizing and recognition in the field of women’s rights in many parts of the world. In China, many women enjoy a half day work day today in honor of the holiday while in Brazil, more than 75,000 women will join one another on bridges around the country in solidarity. In our classroom today students from Eritrea told us that everything would be closed down in their country on such an important day.

In the United States however, the holiday has largely fallen from mainstream celebration, fighting Hallmark and Cadbury for public attention between Valentine’s Day and Easter. While women in the US may no longer be struggling with inhumane working conditions in factories on our own soil, it is important for us all to remember that though we’ve come a long way, we have a long way yet to go. The United States with all of its great forward strides in establishing basic rights and protections against discrimination, is still neither safe nor equitable for many women and girls.

The US today is a place where a sexual assault occurs every 2 minutes, and one in which 97% of rapists never spend a single day in jail. In 2013,150 years after Lincoln’s proclamation, we remain a nation of slavery, a place where a human being is trafficked every ten minutes into enslavement in our own country and where the FBI estimates that 293,000 children are at risk of being forced into the domestic sex trade, the majority of them girls. We are a nation where “equity” means that there are more female CEO’s than ever before, but that they are still paid on average 69% of what their male counterparts make. And if we return to the roots of today’s importance, we find that though safety standards and labor rights have been well established in our own country, workers in  US owned manufacturing companies overseas are barely further along than those first protesters in NY in 1857. Without a doubt, we are a nation that still very much needs an International Women’s Day.

Of course, today is not only a day to renew our efforts to fight discrimination and violence against women – it is also a day to recognize and rejoice in the incredible contributions of women past and present to our global community. Today in our Cultural Orientation class, newly arrived refugees and staff members, both men and women, shared the stories of the women that have been important to them in their lives. Not surprisingly, many remembered their mothers, their sisters and their wives as people who cared for them, pushed them forward, sacrificed for them and who remain with them in their hearts across great distances and time. 

Women from Cultural Orientation Class and CWS Staff, Int’l Women’s Day March 8th 2013

 That classroom today was full of women who themselves are incredibly inspiring. They are women who have taken great risks for a better future for themselves and their families. They are women who have left behind their networks of support and who struggle with tremendous loss but push onward toward a brighter – and safer – future. Today, we at CWS give thanks to each of these women and to those that have inspired them to be who they are today. Your strength provides us strength and for that, we are in gratitude.

Djoan Rmah and Kelly Dent

Piong H and her family

Employment Specialist Nikeshia poses with new arrival Tamrat after just returning to the office with their first official job offer in the US.

Tamrat arrived in the US after fleeing persecution in Ethiopia in December of 2012. With a background in teaching and an innate desire to contribute, Tamrat was ready and willing to learn, volunteer and work anywhere that would take him. He attended cultural orientation classes, English classes, and started driving lessons soon after arrival. In his free time he often came to the office asking if there was anything he could do to help, just to keep his mind busy.

His Employment Specialist, Nikeshia Womack, is also new to our program. She joined during the high season this fall and Tamrat is one of the first cases she took on as her own. Together they applied for job after job and spent hours practicing for interview questions and taking online job application questionnaires. They finally got a bite when a notoriously difficult to break into large American company called back for an interview. Yesterday they studied together in our conference room, practicing everything from how do you know when it’s okay to sit down at an interview to what to say when they ask you about your weaknesses or your experiences with conflict. Today Tamrat arrived at our office early, dressed sharply in a dark suit, feeling anxious and unsure. Our staff all wished him good luck but reminded him that it often takes many interviews in the US before finally getting a job. As he left, we worried about how deflated he would feel when he saw that despite all his hard work, he was just one of many vying for the same entry level position.

A couple of hours later, Nikeshia and Tamrat returned with wide smiles on their faces. He was hired on the spot! Our staff all gathered to shake his hand and offer high fives. He thanked us and his newly minted employment specialist and looked embarrassed and proud all at once. Though his first job will not utilize his advanced degrees and background in teaching, Tamrat is thrilled to be given the opportunity to work, the chance to contribute and to support himself. The right to work is one that has been stripped from most refugees in their paths to freedom. Now employed, Tamrat will have a focus to his days and will be able to take over his household expenses. With careful spending, he’ll try to save a bit so that when his wife joins him later she will have a stable home to arrive in.

Though the CWS Employment team places over 100 refugees in jobs each year – the sense of celebration never fades. Every placement is a triumphant first step down a long road to a new life. We are so proud of Tamrat and of all of our other clients putting themselves out their every day to get a job – any job – and who work hard to keep it.

Cleaning Kits put together by local school group in 2011

Yesterday, in partnership with Whole Foods of Friendly Center, we came a long way toward making that process just a little easier. With your support through shopping during Whole Foods’ 5% Day, we raised enough money to buy 100 pillows, 100 sheet sets, 100 towels and enough cleaning supplies, trash bins, shower curtains, and toiletries to stock 50 homes for new arrivals with essentials. Not too shabby for a rainy week day in the middle of January!

In 2013, CWS expects to receive around 250 newly arrived refugees who will mostly come with little more than a small bag on their backs. We will set up approximately 60 new homes this year, stocking each with everything from beds and tables and couches to shower curtains, cooking oil and sponges.

Hope Chapel volunteers unload donations from their furniture drive.

We want to say THANK YOU to everyone who came out yesterday to support us and to everyone who has donated their time and supplies over the years as well as to Whole Foods for their continued support of our programs. If you’d like to stay involved, please consider helping us reach our housing goals. Though we have some of our supplies covered, we are still raising money for bigger ticket items like warm blankets, vacuum cleaners, rice cookers, car seats and the like with $4,500 left to raise.  We can also use your time (volunteers for household set up are in high demand and short supply!) as well as your gently used home items such as dishes, silver wear, working vacuum cleaners, pots and pans in good condition, professionally dry cleaned or new blankets, and furniture items. Teams can help put together cleaning kits or organize supplies as well. Give us a call at 336-617-0381 or email sivory@churchworldservice.org.