East African kids play ball at the East African Community and Cultural Center. San Diego
is home to about 30,000 refugees from Somalia, Southern Sudan,
Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Eritrea and other parts of East Africa. Most
of the refugees settle in City Heights, and the area has the second largest East African refugee community in the nation after Minneapolis.
Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/12/01/3641689/east-african-refugees-find-education.html#storylink=cpy
Sunday, December 01, 2013
Mahamud Abdi had seen the worst of war and humanity in his
native Somalia by the time he was 11 and found himself in a sixth grade
classroom in San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood in 1994.He did not know English, and was confused and afraid in a new country.
“You literally walk into class feeling like you’re deaf,” he said. “You can hear, but what are you hearing?”
Back
then, Abdi and his family, including his grandmother and 12 siblings,
lived in a tiny three-bedroom apartment. The boy faced bullying, gangs
and academic pressures. Another refugee, Abdiweli Heibeh, came to speak
at school and inspired him.
Now 30, Abdi is in graduate school for health administration at University of California,
San Diego, and volunteers as a mentor at the East African Community and
Cultural Center, where he hopes to instill the same sense of purpose in
other youth. The nonprofit center, founded by Heibeh in 2008, serves
East African youths and families in City Heights, east of downtown.
San Diego is home to about 30,000 refugees from Somalia, South Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Eritrea and other parts of East Africa,
one of the largest concentrations in the nation. Many have settled in
City Heights, known for its cultural diversity, poverty and crime.
The
migration began with Ethiopians in the early 1980s and continued with
Somalis in the early 1990s after civil wars broke out, forcing many to
flee their homeland, said Bob Montgomery, executive director of the San
Diego office of the International Rescue Committee, a refugee
resettlement agency. Somalis make up the largest group of East Africans
in San Diego, with about 15,000, he said.
The committee assists
all refugees, including through youth programs that offer tutoring,
leadership development and career exploration.
Though they leave
war behind, life in the U.S. means overcoming new challenges: learning
English, obtaining schooling or a job, learning to drive and making
enough money to support themselves and family.
Additionally, many East African refugees
have stayed in refugee camps, often in Kenya, for years. For children,
that means years of interrupted education, Montgomery said.
There
also are struggles that are harder to talk about, like overcoming
culture shock, trauma, depression and differences in gender roles within
families between the homeland and America. In Somalia, men are the
breadwinners, but when they come to the U.S. they can feel inferior if
they face unemployment and their wives take jobs, Heibeh said.
Heibeh
knows firsthand about the problems refugees encounter. He faced the
same issues when he arrived in the U.S. in 1986 from Somalia. The
process of seeking political asylum and assimilating to U.S. culture
took time.
Creating a support base for refugees was crucial to Heibeh, who did not know where to seek help when he came here.
“I wanted to help my fellow refugees to not make the same mistakes I did,” he said.
Heibeh has become a role model to many because of his path to success.
Early
on, he was a part-time interpreter for the courthouse, then a civilian
community service officer, eventually completing the police academy and
rising to detective. He was the first Somali American officer to join
the San Diego Police Department.
He retired from the department
because of a back injury and now focuses on the center, using his
experience to help youths avoid the temptation of crime and gangs.
Through the center, he has started a youth mentoring program where young
Somalis in college and graduate school meet one-on-one during the
school year with refugees in high school and middle school.
Heibeh
matches the volunteer mentors to the youths based on need and
experience on problems ranging from trouble with grades and how to apply
to college to dealing with trauma from their past and getting off
drugs. He also provides mediation between East African parents and
youths who are growing up American.
More recently, he helped start
regular roundtable discussions with the office of U.S. Attorney Laura
Duffy, the FBI and community groups to improve communication and
relationships. Among the group’s concerns are barriers that prevent
youths from going to school, along with bullying and gang recruitment,
said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jill Burkhardt.
“We needed to create dialogue and build trust,” Burkhardt said.
One
hope is people will feel more comfortable coming forward if they are
victimized by crime or if they suspect criminal activity, she said.
Heibeh
said another goal is radicalization prevention to deter young Somalis
raised in America from joining Islamic extremist groups.
In
February, four men, all immigrants from Somalia, were convicted by a
federal jury in San Diego of conspiracy to provide material support to
the terrorist group al-Shabab, which claimed responsibility for the
Kenyan mall attack in September. There have been more reports of Somalis
in Minnesota becoming linked with this group.
When youths have
run-ins with the law, landing on probation or in jail, they are
vulnerable to radicalization, Heibeh said. Groups recruit young,
isolated Somalis in prison and through the Internet, he said. These
recruits may have never been to their parents’ homeland or left at a
very young age.
“They don’t talk to their families because they
disappointed them,” he said. “They feel a sense of uselessness that
nobody cares about them, so they spend a lot of time on the Internet.”
On
a recent Saturday at the center, children tossed a ball while their
parents took part in a health fair or a language class upstairs.
By
afternoon, a mother, her head covered by a red hijab scarf with beading
that sparkled, distributed pizza slices to a throng of attentive
children. Laughter mixed with Somali and English words filled the room.
Many
problems that Somali refugee youths face today are similar to those
faced by children who arrived in the mid-1990s, Abdi said.
Abdi’s
family came to San Diego after about two years in a camp in Kenya.
Before the camp, his family often walked by night, hungry, dodging
militia gunfire and seeking safety after the war broke out.
It
took time to build confidence, but when Abdi was a high school junior he
said he felt a sense of urgency about the future. At community college,
he said he stumbled, but found his footing by the time he transferred
to San Diego State University, where he completed a bachelor’s degree in
social science.
The boys Abdi advises face pressures like
cyberbullying, ethnic tensions, academic expectations from teachers and
parents and intense economic hardships.
“Kids will tell you, ‘My
father cannot sit down with me because he is driving a cab for 12
hours,’” Abdi said. “I try to motivate them … The only way you get there
is you actually do the work. Seek help. You don’t know everything.”
Abdi urges students to use the stronger support system available to them now.
For
instance, the San Diego Unified School District formed the Somali
District Task Force in 2006 to better address the needs of Somali
families. Somali parents were “feeling unheard and unvalidated,” said
Agin Shaheed, the district’s program manager for race, human relations
and advocacy.
Regular meetings between top school district and law
enforcement officials, Somali community groups and families helped
develop culturally relevant curriculum, language proficiency and goals
that bolstered student and parent engagement, he said.
But in a large, diverse area, the need to communicate often and promote empathy remains.
“Every case is not the same,” Heibeh said. “The key is education, education and education.”
Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/12/01/3641689/east-african-refugees-find-education.html#storylink=cpy