1. 11/20/2016 SPOTLIGHT! | Smith-Barbieri
https://www.smith-barbieri.com/spotlight/ 24/62
AICC kids & staff get productive at the new education
center & computer lab!
American Indian Community Center
Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund supported project!
New education department and computer lab open!
610 E. North Foothills Drive, Spokane
A message from AICC Executive Director, Lux Devereaux …
The AICC education department and computer lab are set up
and open for business. People are slowly migrating to the new
center, including families and children. They are thoroughly
enjoying the computer assistance and homework activities. We
fully anticipate growing the program now that we are up and
running.
We are very excited about the program particularly with its
potential to become a permanent service here at the Center.
Tutoring youth is one of the areas with limited services,
especially with our Native American kids and teens. We thank
the Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund for their support.
Check out the full services of the AICC here.
Like the American Indian Community Center on Facebook!
Meet two of the estimated 30,000 former refugees in
our area
Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund important update
For Erick, Refugee Connections Spokane has done much more than help him navigate this strange land:
it has given him the gift of usefulness, as well, by providing opportunities for volunteering and
connection with fellow refugees.
Raad, newly introduced to the Refugee Connections Spokane staff, hopes his turn will come soon. He
has a long list of projects he wants to begin to enrich Spokane’s cultural life, to give of his unique talents
to a community that has given him his life.
Former refugees and the people who help connect
us all
Worst of all, perhaps, for Raad, 60, an Iraqi refugee living in Spokane, are his feelings of utter uselessness when
he has always given so much to the world. An artist, poet, and filmmaker, the scion of a well-known family, he
was a respected teacher in his native Baghdad, and, as a refugee in Syria for three years, an art therapist who
helped children process the horrors of war.His hands move constantly as he speaks, sometimes with tears in
his eyes, of all he would like to give to Spokane, but cannot make the right connections, somehow. Sharing a
small apartment, he has no room to make the glass and plastic art for which he was known until terrorists blew
up his studio in an attempt on his life.After emigrating to Syria, he lived in Damascus, working as activities
director at a community center and teaching art to refugee children who drew bombs and blood, gruesome
depictions of war and terror. One boy made images of beheadings, over and over. Raad asked him why, and he
said he’d seen his own father murdered.”I changed those children,” Raad says, adding that many of the
children called him “godfather.” “I am proud of what I did for refugees, what I did for kids.”In Spokane since
2012, Raad is one of an estimated 30,000 refugees living in the city,
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2. 11/20/2016 SPOTLIGHT! | Smith-Barbieri
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said Stephanie Zimmerman of the non-profit Refugee Connections
Spokane, an organization working to help refugees assimilate and
thrive in the community.The population comprises men, women,
elderly, and children running for their lives-literally-from Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Congo, Burma,
Nepal, Russia, Ukraine, and other countries around the world.The list soon may expand to include Syria,
since Barack Obama this week agreed to accept 10,000 refugees from that country, where bloody civil war has
driven hundreds of thousands into Europe in a spectacular, devastating mass migration.For those who settle
here, Spokane is the final stop in a journey typically long and fraught with danger. News reports have
documented the drownings of groups trying to leave their countries by boat, and, recently, of refugees found
dead in the back of a truck in Austria. Those who make it this far count themselves fortunate to be
alive.Resettled by the organization World Relief via a contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland
Security, refugees find themselves in an often-bewildering new world when they arrive, says Anna
Bondarenko, outreach coordinator for Refugee Connections Spokane and a former employee at World
Relief.After greeting them at Spokane International Airport, World Relief caseworkers help refugees find and set
up a home, connect them with the state Department of Social and Health Services for benefits, help them find
medical care, and help them find work. Some of the city’s biggest refugee employers include the Davenport
Hotel, the Panda Express fast-food chain, and building manufacturing company Scafco, Bondarenko says.
Among their first-and most formidable-hurdles is learning English, which they must do to receive federal aid,
Bondarenko says. But another challenge they face isn’t so easily remedied: Spokane’s notorious lack of ethnic
diversity, and the biases that can result.
Too often, Zimmerman says, residents here view refugees with the same suspicious eye with which they
see undocumented immigrants: as criminals and takers. In fact, though, many who come are here before
they had no other recourse except death-and, like Raad, they want to give something back to the
community.
Erick was 7 when his family, members of the Tutsi tribe, fled their village in Burundi, near Rwanda, in the wake
of mass killings by Hutu tribesmen.
The parents and six children had no time to plan their escape, but simply walked away, leaving their
possessions behind, fearing for their lives with every step. They marched for weeks, sharing food with others in
the larger group, sleeping wherever they could, stripping the leaves from trees and trying to eat them, and, after
crossing into neighboring Tanzania, knocking on doors to beg for food and shelter.
They lived this way for a year, said Erick, now 29, until the United Nations opened a refugee camp in Tanzania.
Getting fed regularly and having a tent for shelter came as a great relief, but they yearned for home. Their one
attempt, in 1997, to return to their village did not succeed.
“It was crazy. They were killing people,” Erick says. The family turned around and walked back to the camp,
where it remained until 2004-a total of 10 years.
Although better than living in constant fear, life in the refugee camp was very difficult, Erick says. In Burundi, he
said, his family grew rice, casava, bananas and other foods in the rich, fertile soil.
“We didn’t have to ask if we were going to eat tomorrow,” he says. “We were happy with what we had.”
In the camp, the family built a hut on a plot of land too tiny even for a garden, he said. Unable to grow their
food, they relied on handouts of cooking oil, beans, flour, and other staples.
“In refugee camp, I was not happy,” Erick says. “Refugee camp was not a good time.”
Now, Erick is on the giving end of the refugee chain, translating and interpreting, helping new arrivals with
errands in his car, and, this year, working in Refugee Connections Spokane’s newest program, the Refugees’
Harvest Project, in which 50 refugees from various backgrounds harvest donated produce and distribute it free
of charge at the East Central Community Center.”It’s their way of saying, ‘Thank you, Spokane, for accepting
us. Thank you for allowing us to be here. Now we’re going to give back to you,” Bondarenko says.The program
embodies “what a civilized compassionate society does,” says Sharon Smith, co-trustee of the Smith-
Barbieri Progressive Fund, which endowed the Harvest Project with a $4,000 grant this year. The
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philanthropic fund aims to alleviate poverty, among other causes.Smith
also lauded the program for increasing awareness of Spokane’s
refugee
community, which is largely
invisible or misunderstood, she
says. With the Spokane area
expected to grow nearly 20
percent by 2030, diversity is
certain to increase in our
community, and tolerance will
need to grow, as well, she
adds.“We need to start better understanding other people and
adjusting to accommodate them if we are to live in wellness and
prosperity together,” Smith says.Other Refugee Connections
Spokane programs include:
Elder Outreach Project, connecting elders to one another and to services
Patient Passport Project, helping refugees document their medical conditions and histories in a
“passport”-style brochure to carry with them, and
American Law and Justice Workshop, helping them to understand the U.S. criminal justice system and
their own rights and responsibilities.
For Erick, Refugee Connections Spokane has done much more than help him navigate this strange land: it has
given him the gift of usefulness, as well, by providing opportunities for volunteering and connection with fellow
refugees.”This is what I am looking for,” he thought when he began working with the Harvest Project.”I like for
people to be happy,” he says. “I’m very happy to be in the USA.”Raad, newly introduced to the Refugee
Connections Spokane staff, hopes his turn will come soon. He has a long list of projects he wants to begin to
enrich Spokane’s cultural life, to give of his unique talents to a community that has given him his life.”I want to
meet people,” Raad says, and describes the films he wants to make, the writing workshops he wants to give,
the speeches he could deliver, the Arabic-language TV station he wants to start, with artist interviews, comedic
films (“In my country, we like to laugh”) and even a cooking show.”I want to make activities,” he says, his hands
moving, moving. “This is not right.”
***
This article was commissioned by the Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund and written by Sherry Jones. Sherry
Jones is an author and freelance writer living in Spokane. Contact her at sherry@authorsherryjones.com.
***
World Relief didn’t return our call for participation in this story, however, you may learn more about their role in
our local refugee settlement process in a Spokesman-Review article that ran online Friday.
Reproductive health care under attack in Pullman,
literally
Smith-Barbieri Progressive Fund important update
An early-morning fire at Planned Parenthood in Pullman Friday was arson, according to the Pullman Fire
Department and the Inland Northwest Joint Terrorism Task Force (Spokesman-Review). The investigation
is ongoing.Most Planned Parenthood health clinics have seen increased aggression since heavily debunked
videos were released by an anti-choice group recently. A well-funded and organized anti-reproductive health
effort has been particularly aggressive in Pullman for some time but it has ratcheted up recently.
The clinic has been targeted in spite of the fact that Planned Parenthood Pullman doesn’t perform
abortions.
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