There’s no doubt the most popular service at Refugee and Immigrant Self-Empowerment is the case management program, where clients can ask for services like employment help and translation. But RISE has a lineup of programs aimed at providing the local refugee community with resources and opportunities to grow into American culture while staying true to their native country’s roots. These include a children’s after-school program; ESL and citizenship classes; and the women’s empowerment project.

As the organization’s director of programs, Rebecca Miller’s responsibilities include managing the programs and events at RISE, as well as recruiting and supervising volunteers from Syracuse University and the neighboring community.

“If people seek that out when you’re young and learning, then it can impact the rest of your career no matter what you do,” Miller said. “You’ll always have a certain level of awareness in the back of your mind that other people may not have.”

• • •

Perrine Wasser hopes to someday hang a large world map inside one of the classrooms at the RISE center.

“I would love for (students) to see where their home countries are in relation to the United States,” said Wasser, a sophomore sociology and citizenship and civic engagement double major at SU.

Wasser, an active volunteer at RISE, teaches refugees and immigrants in the organization’s citizenship class, held on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. The lessons focus around a booklet that contains the 100 possible questions that new Americans are asked during a citizenship exam. The exam itself comprises 10 questions from the booklet — six of which must be answered correctly — as well as speaking and writing portions.

RISE’s citizenship class — which takes place on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays — focuses on the 100 possible questions that may be asked on the naturalization exam.Jessica Sheldon | Staff Photographer

No two classes are the same. Sometimes they involve group discussions or, depending on the number of volunteers that day, one-on-one help. Students write in their composition notebooks, copying questions from the booklet and trying to understand what they’re writing. Other times, they will partner up with volunteers to practice conversations for the exam’s speaking portion.

Wasser thinks the exam tests an individual’s English proficiency more than it tests his or her knowledge of the American government. The language barrier makes it harder to understand certain vocabulary terms like “Constitution” or “Declaration of Independence” that might not have a direct translation in the individual’s native language.

But Wasser said she has become more compassionate and empathetic to the refugees in her experiences volunteering at RISE.

“It’s challenging. You just have to take it step by step,” Wasser said. “I see how badly they want to learn English and how badly they are trying to learn so that they can be citizens.”

• • •

There is a saying in Haji Adan’s family: Education is a personal thing.

“My father used to beat me up if I missed school,” said Adan, executive director of RISE. “I think I still have a bite from him on my back.”

A heavy emphasis on education is what drove RISE to start an after-school program for refugee children many years ago. Whether to children of refugees or refugees themselves, the program assists children with homework, provides worksheets in the absence of homework and caps each night with fun, educational activities such as spelling bees or debates.

“We often find that the kids that struggle in school, the majority are the ones that are not doing their homework,” Adan said.

The program takes place Monday through Thursday between 5 to about 7 p.m. in RISE’s three classrooms. Each one is decorated to look like a real classroom, filled with books, toys, educational card games, word searches and more. The classrooms are split by grade: kindergarten to second grade, third to fifth grade and sixth to eighth grade.

The reality is, Adan said, that many of the children’s parents are illiterate even in their own language. They can’t help their kids with homework because they never had any formal schooling, even in their native countries.

That’s where the after-school program comes in.

“The hopes of their parents are on their children,” Adan said. “We have to educate them because education is the key to open the world.

“Without education is without life.”

A wall inside one of the RISE classrooms is decorated with letters to President Donald Trump from children in the after-school program. Bryan Cereijo | Staff Photographer

• • •

Khadija Muse’s parents wanted to send her back to Africa at the age of 17 or 18 to get married. In her culture, it’s not strange for a young woman to get married at that age. But Muse refused.

“I still have a dream. I don’t want to give up,” she said.

Muse is one of RISE’s bridging case managers and runs the women’s empowerment project, specifically targeted for young girls and women of refugee and international backgrounds. Similar to some of RISE’s other programs, the women’s empowerment project focuses on academic and moral support for young women.

That’s part of the reason why Haji Adan, RISE’s executive director, hired Muse to work at RISE. It was important to him that the person who led the program was someone that girls could look up to.

“I didn’t even know Haji knew me,” Muse said. “He told me, ‘I need you here. I want you to help me. I want you as a role model for the girls in this community.’”

Adan sees the program as an indirect way of fighting the cultural expectations of young women marrying early and being stay-at-home wives. He said he wants to bring girls together and find ways for them to pursue their dreams without tensions rising with their parents or being forced to marry at a young age.

“These young girls have a bright future,” Adan said. “For Khadija to lead that program gives another hope to the kids, for them to say, ‘Yes I can do that.’”

Published on April 18, 2017 at 11:26 pm

Contact Clare: clramire@syr.edu