Volunteer Training Opportunity

Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement is offering a training session called “Fundamentals of Interpreting” to all interested volunteers within the community. Effective, accurate and respectful interpreting is a vital skill needed to serve limited-English speakers in our community. This valuable, interactive, free session reviews the skills and framework necessary to interpret successfully. Volunteers of all language skills and cultural backgrounds are encouraged to attend.   

Benefits:

• Gain a valuable understanding of interpreting best practices
• Free of charge
• Certificate of attendance

Topics:

• Translation vs. Interpretation
• Interpreting as a profession
• National standards of practice
• Interpreting tools
• Effective interpreter partnerships
• Equalizing power with language
• Ethical issues
• Interpreting boundaries
• Legal obligations

Date:

Friday March 8^th, 9am – 4pm in the 4^th floor training room.

Location:
Catholic Charities

2740 SE Powell Blvd #8

Portland, OR 97202

Facilitator:
Toc Soneoulay-Gillespie, MSW is the Youth Services Program Manager at Impact NW and has served as a community organizer and trainer in the refugee and immigrant community since 2004. With the guidance from the State Refugee Coordinator, Mrs. Soneoulay-Gillespie implemented the very first Fundamentals of Interpreting training in Anchorage, Alaska using dialogue, roles plays, and other tools to enhance the knowledge and understanding of interpreting as a profession.

The space is limited to 30 participants and spots are filling up quick, so please sign up as soon as possible to reserve a spot.
 
TO REGISTER: email Patty Narvaez: pnarvaez@catholiccharitiesoregon.org or call 503-688-2692 (My office hours are: M,T,Th, F  8:30am to noon)

You Can't Travel Without Money

Greetings Volunteers. We hope this blog post finds you in good spirits as the spring season starts to peek through the rolling clouds. At the office we are falling back in to the swing of new arrivals and the joy that comes with placing new families and clients in a new and promising environment. We are using this post to shed light on a conversation topic that would be helpful to have with the Refugees with whom you share your time. The topic: Migration and Refugee Service Travel Loans.

What is the Loan?

Refugees traveling to the U.S. are issued interest-free loans by the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to pay for the cost of their transportation to the U.S.  Every refugee eighteen and over signs a Promissory Note acknowledging  this loan, and the commitment to repay the loan in regular monthly payments once they are settled, usually within six months.

Why is it Important?

This loan, like any other, affects the credit of the individual who signed for the funds. This means the travel loan affects credit just the same as a car or house loan would. A default status or inability to pay the payments on time will put a negative score on the credit of the family or individual. On-time payments build a healthy and valuable positive credit score for the clients to use to their advantage in the future.

What can we do?

As volunteers helping out with the newly arriving clients, you can educate them on the importance of staying up-to-date on their loan status. This includes the following:

·         Notifying both our program and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) of any address changes made by the family or clients

·         Preparing the family for the arrival of the first bill around  the 6^th month following their arrival

·         Educating about the effects a negative credit score can have on their financial well being

It is the client’s responsibility, as stated on the promissory note, to maintain an up-to-date address and contact number with USCCB. If they fail to do this, and don’t receive the invoice for their travel loan, the IOM and United States Government can take action against the default loan. Please use this information in mind when talking with your refugee partners.  As always, thank you for your hard work and dedication and feel free to call with any questions regarding the travel loans.

A B ...C You Later!

Family and tutoring volunteers  commit to six months of weekly meetings with their refugee family.  And while most volunteers work at least that long with their refugee partners, sooner or later life circumstances intervene. The volunteer (or, sometimes, the family) moves on.  Good-byes, however, are part of life, no matter where you live.  And in this situation, they’re always positive and poignant.

 Below are two notes from Jenna Ramaker, a volunteer who helped three Congolese boys with their homework and their English for a year and a half.  The first was written in May of 2012:

Things are going really well with the boys.  They are making good progress, and the family has continued to be really rewarding to work with.

Just within the last month of so, Brian has progressed a lot in being able to start reading on his own.  Prior to this, we’ve spent a lot of time stuck on the basics of the alphabet and vowel sounds, and just recently it seems to be all coming together for him…I’d  love it if he is able to read by next fall when he starts junior high.  B and A are also doing well.  B is getting much more proficient with his letters and numbers, and although he definitely still needs a lot of guidance, we are starting to work on addition and subtraction.

The family has been great, and are always great to interact with.  I’ve gotten to know some of the cousins and neighbors over the past couple of months, so it’s been a really good environment to work in. 

Working with the K family has continued to be an amazingly rewarding experience.

The final update…December 2012:

Just to update you, Dec. will be my last month volunteering with the K’s. It has been an amazing experience, and I'm sad that I won't be able to continue; I'm graduating school in a couple of months, and the new year has uncertainty as I look to be repositioned and anticipate having less flexibility as I settle into a new job and possibly new city. 

The boys have made so much progress since I started working with them, it has been fulfilling to be a part of it.  When I first met B, he didn't know the alphabet and in the past year and a half of working with him, he has learned to read.  He also went from not being able to count, to learning addition, subtraction, and recently, multiplication.  C has mastered the alphabet and its sounds, counting, simple addition, and orally is much more advanced in English than when I started working with him.  As you can tell, I'm very proud of their accomplishments, and have found it really rewarding to work with the K family and the Catholic Charities refugee resettlement center. 

The other rewarding moment was each week when I’d arrive at the K’s house, hearing their two year-old sister start calling out my name, even before she spoke many other English words.

 I look forward to volunteering again in the future if circumstances permit!  

This is one volunteer, but she speaks for all of you who have every right to be proud.  Thank you, Jenna.

On a side note, if you’re working with someone who’s having difficulty mastering our alphabet sounds, here’s a link to a youtube video that might help.  It was created by Heidi Moses, another dedicated volunteer who not only mentors an Iraqi refugee but also facilitated the first stages of our ESL class.  Thank you, Heidi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4VEsx4ERqE