WORN

The following is a promotional video for WORN, a project I'm working on as an evaluator at the University of Texas at Arlington in collaboration with Catholic Charities Diocese of Fort Worth.  The research arm of the project is focused on the idea that if we're able to promote a venue for socialization and financial opportunity for refugee women, we may see benefits related to decreased depression, isolation, and PTSD as well as greater financial independence.  Check it out!

A Refugee Garden

There is a small movement in the refugee resettlement community to encourage community gardening.  Because many refugees spent much of their lives subsistence farming, the thought is that their expertise in agriculture and gardening may assist in the transition to life in the US. There have been a good number of anecdotal stories about successful gardens in refugee communies, and a fair number of published accounts of these experiences. 

So this year we decided to tap into some of the resources that we have living out in the country to put some of these ideas to the test with a sample size of one--our friend Pu Lue.  Pu Lue is a Karen refugee and a carpenter by trade; he stays with us several days each week building custom furniture to sell and this spring, planting and managing a rather large garden.  Our neighbor, a farmer who actively farms several hundered acres, generously donated a few acres for our project and has been an invaluable resource in helping Pu Lue to understand the ins and outs of growing vegetables in the U.S.

With Pu Lue's direction, we ordered hundreds of seeds from Thailand this past winter and had them shipped here in early February.  The seeds that we ordered were vegetables and fruits grown and enjoyed by the refugees that they have been unable to locate since their arrival in the U.S.  Pu Lue is thrilled with the garden, and painstakingly waters, weeds, and cares for the plants almost daily.  He is anxiously looking forward to the harvest that he will be able to share with the refugee community in Dallas.

A new family...a new challenge

Often, we work with families that challenge us and stretch our resources thin. This is a story about one of those families.

B.D. is married with three girls, ages 13, 9 and 7. They were resettled to the US in August 2010 to the state of Rhode Island. B.D.'s brother lives in Dallas so B.D. decided to move his family to Dallas in April 2011.

Some quick side notes about refugee resettlement.

Refugee families have a choice for the country they will be resettled. Although, about 90% of refugees resettled are resettled to the US. The families do NOT, however, get a choice of where in the US they are resettled. Even though B.D. had family members living in Dallas, they were not given the choice of states therefore they ended up being resettled to Rhode Island.

Another idiosyncrasy about refugee resettlement, the federal government is not directly resettling these families. The federal government awards grants, or contracts, with local voluntary agencies (called Volags). The federal government gives a set amount of monies to the volags to provide services to the recently resettled. These volags use this money to provide resettled families with the goods and services they need until they become "financially self-sufficient." In general, "financially self-sufficient" means that members of the family are working. Practically speaking, the families receive assistance from their volags for 6 months or so.

(Editorial comment - it's clear to us that having a job and being "financially self-sufficient" are not the same. Many families of 6 or more are deemed "financially self sufficient" when one family member is working at a job paying $8/hour. Employed? Yes!! Financially self-sufficient? Not even close!!)

The volags (in Dallas - International Rescue Committee, Catholic Charities and Refugee Services of Texas) use the federal dollars to pay for rent, utilities, case management services, employment services, etc. These agencies do amazing work with the resources they are provided. In working with these agencies, it's clear that all of them would like to continue providing services, however the financial restraints prevent them from continuing to assist these families. After the family is employed, services are discontinued - the volags must move on to new families and the previous family are often at a loss for what comes next. To put it in context, if I were to move to Burma, I would need some help. Giving me 6 months of assistance is great....I plant my crops, build a house, etc. But what should I do next, when do I harvest my crops? What do I do when my child is sick?

To take it one more step, the federal dollars provided to assist these families are given to volags that provide services to the geographic location where they are resettled. This means, if you choose to move from one place to another.....you no longer have formal case management services to assist you. You are on your own, you must find your way...or find someone willing to help even though there is no financial reimbursement for the assistance provided.

Because D.B. moved from Rhode Island to Dallas, he and his family lost all formal assistance. One of the cultural liaisons we work with told us about this family and we set off to see how we could help. We found D.B. and his family living at his brother's apartment. They had already signed a lease with an apartment complex, planning to move to their new apartment in a week or two.
As I had written previously, D.B. is married with 3 girls. The oldest (13 years) and the youngest (7 years) both have a rare genetic disorder called Osteogenesis Imperfecta. In short, Osteogenesis Imperfecta is a genetic disorder causing extremely fragile bones. Both of these girls require a wheelchair to be able to move about.

Over the course of the past three weeks, these are the things we've done to help this one family:

School
We enrolled all three girls in school, which was a process that involved a total of seven visits to the schools for academic placement testing, meetings with teachers and special education services, and arranging for bus transportation.  Two of the girls are required to wear uniforms, so we purchased two sets of uniforms for each child.

Healthcare
All three children had to have additional shots to attend school in Texas, so we made two trips to the free clinic to attain the necessary vaccinations.  This involves arriving at the clinic at 7 am.  One day we waited until 12 noon to be seen; the next day it was 1:30 pm.  Because of the girls' medical condition, we contacted the genetics clinic at Children's Medical Center to enroll them in a special clinical trial so that they will receive state of the art medical care.  Their first appointments are not until August, but we were relieved that they were accepted as new patients.

Medicaid and Food Stamps
Because Medicaid and Food Stamps are state run programs, not only do new applications need to be completed and submitted here in Texas, but in order to qualify we must prove that the family is no longer receiving these benefits in Rhode Island. This, apparently, can only be done in the form of a letter from the Social Services Department in Rhode Island.  I won't even go into how difficult it is to actually talk to a live person on the phone there, much less attempt to have a letter sent to us.  Instead, we must wait two months and then apply using the family's new address, foregoing the letter requirement.  So for two months the family will rely on donations and food from friends until their Food Stamp application can be submitted.

Settling in
D.B. and his family have an empty two bedroom apartment.  We've been working with our church and others to try to find donations of furniture, housewares, clothing, and toys to help the family piece their lives back together now that they're here in Dallas.

Last week when we showed up, the apartment was full of people.  We learned that 19 additional people--three more families--had just arrived from Rhode Island and were staying with D.B. and his family until they could find apartments of their own.  They had heard, like D.B., that the cost of living was lower in Texas and that job prospects are better here.  And so our work continues...

Reading is Fun!

We partnered with Phi Kappa Phi, an honors fraternity at the University of Texas at Arlington, to promote reading among kids and adolescents in the Karen refugee community just before spring break.  Student and faculty members of Phi Kappa Phi held a book drive on campus and encouraged donations of children's books.  Then several members joined us one Saturday in March at the apartment complexes to distribute the books and read stories.  We broke up into several groups, each with a student or faculty volunteer, a Karen leader, and a cultural broker.  We had a great time and the books were very much appreciated by all of the families we spent time with that day.  Below, some photos and a video from our day of reading.

Film Screening

Thanks so much to all who came to see Moving to Mars tonight at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Oak Cliff.  It was a wonderful fim, and we were thrilled that a number of our Karen and Karenni friends were able to join us at the screening and shared a few of their songs with us.  Here are a few pics from the evening:

Introducing the Karen and Karenni

Aaron talking about our efforts at One World Outreach

Karen teenagers singing a traditional song.

Pla Shee passing out bags of popcorn.

Pu Lue taking photos of the audience :)

Kai getting into the spirit of the event.

Film Screening: Moving to Mars

Note:  Due to inclement weather forcasted for Tuesday evening, this event has been rescheduled for Tuesday, March 1st at 7 pm.

As part of the Social Justice Ministry at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Oak Cliff, an amazing film about the refugee resettlement experience, Moving to Mars, will be screened on Tuesday, March 1st at 7pm.

The film "follows two refugee families from Burma over the course of a year that will change their lives completely. Forced from their homeland by the repressive military junta, they have lived in a Thai refugee camp for many years. A resettlement scheme offers them the chance of a new life, but their new home, in the British city of Sheffield, will be different to everything they have ever known."


 
We've arranged to have a group of Karen musicians perform in conjunction with the screening, and we will also have some traditional Karen crafts available for sale after the event.  We'll have a brief discussion after the film about the many volunteer opportunities that are available.  It should be a really great event, and we hope that you'll join us!

Desperate times

While we are often struck by the dire situations we walk into doing outreach in the refugee community, a family visit made by Aaron and Holli just before Christmas takes the cake.  Pu Lue was serving as translator and liaison that day, and mentioned that there was a family that needed some help renewing their food stamps application.  We do lots of food stamp and Medicaid applications, so we weren't surprised that they needed help with this. 

Turns out this family needed a lot more than food stamps.  When Aaron checked the fridge (a routine part of the visit, to make sure they had basic necessities), the picture above is what he saw.  I should mention that the two jugs on the bottom shelf are water bottled water.  Despite numerous attempts to explain that the water from the tap is safe in Dallas, we have yet to meet a Karen refugee family who is willing to drink from the tap.  This stems from the years they spent in the refugee camps where the the drinking water was unsafe and full of harmful bacteria.

In doing some further investigating, Holli found a total of two bowls, three plates, and one pot in the kitchen.  The closet revealed two live guinea hens, which, after much discussion, were to be on the dinner menu later in the week!  You can see one of the guineas in the photo below.

Holli and Aaron made a trip to the store to purchase some additional plates and bowls, and loaded up on fresh veggies, fruit, and meats (already butchered) to get the family of seven through the remainder of the week until their emergency food stamp application could be processed. 

That same week, our friends Beverly Black and Bob Bruce generously offered to provide Christmas presents for the family, which includes five children ranging in age from 1 to 10.  Below is a photo of the mayhem that took place as we gathered to open the gifts together. Our son Kai is in the striped shirt looking at the camera. :)

I wish that I could say that this family is an exception, but unfortunately we run into families similar to this one every single week. 



Watching the war

One of the most interesting things that we've noticed in getting to know the Karen refugees over the past few years is that they maintain a deep personal connection to the ongoing fight in Burma.  Though many adults lived in refugee camps in Thailand for more that 15-20 years before their arrival in the U.S., the connection that they still have with Burma is palpable.  One example of this are the DVDs that they have brought with them from the Thai camps that are home videos of the Karen National Union army fighting the Burmese soldiers in the jungles of Burma.  The videos are typically poor quality and depict graphic violence, including field amputations with rudimentary instruments and close-ups of dead Karen soldiers.  The families that we visit ask us to sit and watch the videos with them, so that we might have a better understanding of the ongoing struggle for their country.  Their children watch the videos, too, and parents provide a running commentary as the fighting continues on the screen.  Here is a one minute clip of a video we watched yesterday during a lunch of noodles, pork curry, rice, and frozen pizza at one family's home.

A new name, a new day

We've been remiss in updating this blog, as our attention has been squarely focused on taking a number of steps on the road to creating a more sustainable formal mechanism for helping the refugees in the DFW metroplex.  We (Aaron, Diane, and Holli) spent much of the summer and fall filing paperwork to create a new nonprofit organization, One World Outreach, and we are really excited about this major step forward.  Our mission statement is:


to empower "low-income refugees residing within the state of Texas to thrive culturally, physically, socially, economically, and psychologically by building on existing strengths and resources within the community."


We're currently in the process of working with a wonderful graphic designer, LLB Designs, to develop a logo for One World Outreach that exemplifies our mission, and we plan to apply for 501(c)3 status this spring, once we raise the $800 IRS application fee.


We'll be updating the blog with stories and photos of the people we're helping at least once each week, and hope that you'll join us in our efforts.  I've updated the column on the left with a list of some of the most pressing current needs of the refugee families we're working with.  The most valuable thing you can give, though, is your time.  Please let us know if you have a few hours to spare to help a refugee family read their mail, help with homework, or provide a ride to the grocery store.  It's fun and easy, and it makes a world of difference.


Thanks for reading!


Diane