News
Page 8
Street Roots • Feb. 24-March 2
News
Street Roots • Feb. 24-March 2
Page 9
From left: Fowzia, R ukia and Zainab Ibrahim are sisters. Fowzia Ibrahim, a l&year-old immigrant
from Kenya, says anti-M uslim sentim ent has encouraged her to seek an education and career in law.
She has applied to the Comm unity Youth Ambassadors program.
Teens representing
cultures around the
world apply to become
community youth
ambassadors, connecting
the city o f Portland with
its immigrant and
refugee communities
BY JARED PABEN
STAFF W R IT E R
he day after Donald Trump won the
presidential election, 16-year-old
Fowzia Ibrahim was riding a TriMet
bus to school when an old woman tore
hijab off her head. The woman said, “Things
are different now. You’re not allowed to wear
that thing in our country,” Ibrahim recalled.
The sophomore at northeast Portland’s
Madison High School was frightened and
angry, but she controlled her anger, as
Islam’s prophet Muhammad teaches, she
said. A man on the bus bellowed, “Trump
2016” sarcastically, but nobody came to her
defense. She immediately got off the bus
and waited for the next one.
That episode, and Trump’s anti-Muslim
positions in general, have driven Ibrahim to
seek an education and career in law. She
wants to understand the law to ensure she
isn’t manipulated or taken advantage of.
“I just want to know my rights and how
much power the government has over the
people,” she said.
Ibrahim was one of dozens of immigrants
and refugees to congregate at the East
Portland Community Center on Saturday,
Feb. 18, to interview for one of several
community youth ambassador positions. The
Community Youth Ambassadors program
hires teenagers into two-year jobs, paying
them $12 an hour for work outside of
T
I
M amed K aem (left) and Eder M utara are community
youth ambassadors. Their outgoing group will be
replaced with a new group o f ambassadors.
school. They serve as crucial links between
the Parks and Recreation Department and
immigrant communities.
The ambassadors effort is part of the
city’s $300,000-a-year Parks for New
Portlanders program, which provides
the
culturally relevant recreation opportunities
for foreign-born residents. Since its
inception in 2015, the program has
organized a dozen events, including Portland
World Cup Soccer in the summer and
Portland Intercultural Basketball in the fall.
Ambassadors bring common languages,
cultural understandings and shared
experiences that can help them connect
with immigrants and refugees, some of
whom distrust government because of abuse
they suffered in their home countries. For
some, distrust and fear have been amplified
by Trump’s rise to power, giving the
program a new urgency.
“These youth ambassadors are a kind of
ambassador to re-establish the trust we lost
back home,” said Som Nath Subedi,
coordinator of the Parks for New
Portlanders Program. Subedi is, himself, a
refugee from Bhutan. He lived for years in a
camp in Nepal after Bhutan, with its “One
Nation, One People” policy, expelled tens of
thousands of his people from their
homeland.
On Saturday, 125 teens speaking a
combined 41 .languages vied for seven
available positions. All who applied were
interviewed. For some, it was the first
interview they’d ever done.
One of them was 16-year-old Tway Hit,
who shook hands with and then gave a slight
bow to his first interviewer.
A challenging transition
Hit is Burmese but was born and spent
his youth in Thailand’s Mae La refugee
camp, home to tens of thousands of Thais,
Burmese (including the oppressed Muslim
minority Rohingya) and members of Karen
ethnic groups. War had driven his parents
from Burma, though they have never told
him details of their life there, he said.
The Mae La camp - at Thailand border’s
with Myanmar, formerly called Burma - is a
place where children as young as 5 are
forced to start working to help support the
family, Hit said. His family farmed and
chopped wood. For five years, Hit chopped
wood around the camp, carrying it in 20- to
30-pound bundles on his head.
He and his family moved to the United
States when he was 10. The transition
wasn’t easy, particularly learning English.
“This is my first year speaking it when I
was comfortable,” he said.
In Portland, he once forgot to do his
homework, and when forced to tell his
teacher, he recoiled from her. It was
P H O T O S B Y A N N E D O W N IN G
Som Nath Subedi oversees a Feb. 18 event at the E ast Portland Comm unity Center in which dozens o f teens applied to the Comm unity Youth Ambassadors program. Subedi, a refugee from Bhutan, is the coordinator o f
the Parks fo r New Portlanders Program, which provides recreation opportunities fo r foreign-bom residents.
instinctive, he said, because teachers in
Thailand frequently strike students as
punishment
Hit wants to pursue studies in law as a
sort of exercise in self-defense, though he
insists he isn’t nervous about President
Trump because our system of checks and
balances vests significant power in
Congress.
“It’s good for you to know about laws so
you can protect yourself. If something
happens and you don’t know about laws,
you’re going to be fooled by someone else,”
Hit said.
1 know what it’s like’
Ibrahim, the 16-year-old at Madison High
School, is the oldest of 13 children and has
the most formal education of any member of
her family. She left Kenya at age 3, lived in
Boise, Idaho, for 11 years and arrived in
Portland in 2015.
She knows little of what life is like in the
village she left because her parents don’t
talk about it. She has picked up only bits
and pieces from overhearing their
conversations. That knowledge gap bothers
her. After college, she wants to travel to
Kenya to volunteer and meet her family
members.
Ibrahim said an ambassador position
would help her develop her leadership skills
so she can become an advocate for those in
need. She understands the various
educational, legal and cultural barriers
immigrants face, and she can use shared
experiences to help connect with them, she
said.
“I’m an immigrant myself, so I know what
it’s like to be an immigrant,” she said.
Between two cultures
Muni Mohamed, a 16-year-old sophomore
at David Douglas High School, emigrated
from Mogadishu, Somalia, when she was 6.
Environmental damage and food insecurity
prompted her mom to uproot and move to
the United States with the children.
Mohamed remembers snippets of life in
Mogadishu: They would feed a cat that
visited the apartment, their clothes were
utilitarian but not fashionable, and there
were rocks everywhere. Also, the aggressive
dogs.
“There were violent dogs that would bite .
you. That’s why when we came here, we
were afraid of dogs,” Mohamed said.
Today, she finds herself living between
two cultures. “People say I’m Americanized,
but I’m really not,” she said. “I’m half-half,
in both worlds.”
She said she would be a good community
youth ambassador because she is confident
and outspoken and can get along with
anybody. She is considering pursuing a
business degree at Portland State
University, with the ultimate goal of starting
a business reviewing beauty products.
Portlanders Stand with
Refugees and Im m igrants
event
‘You don’t have a voice in it’
Katy Moreno, 15, was born in California.
Even as a U.S. citizen, she has had a sense
of helplessness since Trump ascended to
the White House. Her parents crossed into
the U.S. from Mexico two decades ago and
remain undocumented immigrants, although
they are in the process of applying for visas.
“I feel like they’re just scared,” the
Centennial High School sophomore said.
“You just really want to help them even
though you don’t have a voice in it.”
An aspiring pediatric nurse, Moreno
thinks she could encourage immigrants,
particularly younger ones, while working as
a community youth ambassador.
“I feel like I’ll be able to motivate others
like others have motivated me,” she said.
Her inspiration has come from her parents
and the Escalera program, a year-round
college-preparation program for local Latino
high school students.
‘We’re here now’
Felix Songolo is a 17-year-old who was
WHAT: A free celebration for all
Portland residents, particularly refugees
and other immigrants, by Portland Parks
and Recreation. It will include
Bollywood. African and Middle Eastern
music and dance.
lives in Africa, not uncommon among
refugees.
“They’re always like, ‘Don’t worry about
that. We’re here now,”’ Songolo said. “That’s
the message they always reiterate.”
An aspiring neurologist, Songolo said he
wants to work as a community youth
ambassador to help immigrants of various
racial groups meld into American society.
“Integration to the culture, I think that’s
a problem a lot of people face,” he said.
Appreciation for diversity
WHEN: 6-9 p.m. Friday. March 17
WHERE: East Portland Community
Center. 740 SE 106th Ave.
ONLINE: portlandoregon.gov parks
article/628601?
born in the the African country of Zambia.
His parents were originally from the
Democratic Republic of Congo but were
dislocated by civil war. They were eventually
granted asylum to live in Zambia and moved
into the capital, Lusaka.
Songolo came to the U.S. when he was 4,
and he remembers little of life in Zambia,
although he clearly recalls drinking
strawberry milk from a food cart owned by
his. dad. His parents talk little of their earlier
On the interviewer side of a table sat
Scott Ransmeier, a Portland resident who
saw a Facebook post by Subedi and
contacted him seeking volunteer
opportunities. Trump’s stunning lack of
compassion and empathy helped motivate
him to get involved with Parks for New
Portlanders last month, he said.
Ransmeier, an enterprise account
executive for a local telecommunications
company, agreed to volunteer as one of nine
interviewers.
“This just feels right to me,” he said,
standing in a gym where a cross-section of
the world’s cultures lined up to check in for
their interviews. “It’s this diversity that
really makes us rich.”
His only regret: “I wish there was a
position for all of them.”