Friends of Refugees

A U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program Watchdog Group

Archive for the ‘African Community Center (Las Vegas)’ Category

ECDC’s cultural orientation for refugees in Las Vegas

Posted by Christopher Coen on August 24, 2010

Ethiopian Community Development Council Inc.’s (ECDC’s) African Community Center in Las Vegas is at the center of a controversy involving two of their refugee clients who have been accused of sexual assault. The African Community Center is now altering its cultural orientation program in response to the allegations.

The recent arrests of two African refugees in the sexual assaults of young girls shocked the Las Vegas refugee community, especially after one man told officers he didn’t know the alleged abuse was wrong in the United States.

The arrests have prompted a Las Vegas refugee resettlement agency to expand an orientation program to reiterate that sexual assault isn’t allowed in the country…

…While sexual assault and child molestation are illegal in Africa, the center wants to reinforce the message among refugees: they must sign a document during the orientation program acknowledging such acts aren’t permitted in the United States. The program will place a greater focus on sexual assaults after the two recent arrests, he said. here

The African Community Center’s focus here seems to be more on protecting itself from liability, by having refugees sign documents acknowledging the illegality of sex crimes, then it does on protecting potential victims. Wouldn’t it be more useful, not to mention more ethical, to focus on the quality of the orientation and the results? Will the orientations be in the refugees’ languages? Will they be accompanied by handouts in the refugees’ languages summarizing what was taught in the orientation? Will the sessions be in manageable segments so as not to overwhelm the refugees with information they will not be able to absorb and remember?

Of course the resettlement agencies and their government oversight agencies should have standardized all of this decades ago, and slowly refined it. As it is, each resettlement agency covers community and cultural orientation in its own way. There is no established curriculum. There are no quality standards. I’ve never heard of tests to show what refugees have learned from these orientations. Some resettlement agencies do a 15 minute home safety orientation. Others invite in representatives from local police departments to orient refugees to rules and laws.

Government oversight agencies give resettlement agencies enormous leeway in determining the minimum standards of the services they give for the resettlement grants they receive. One consequence of that is the typical low quality results we so often see in the refugee resettlement program.

Posted in African Community Center (Las Vegas), community/cultural orientation, Congolese, ECDC, Las Vegas, Nevada, police | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

ECDC’s African Community Center continues resettling refugees in Las Vegas despite 14% unemployment

Posted by Christopher Coen on July 10, 2010

The African Community Center and the State Department are continuing to resettle refugees to Las Vegas despite the city’s official unemployment rate of 14.2% (some estimate the “real” unemploymaent rate is closer to 25%). An article in the Vegas Seven publication extolls African Community Center’s virtues, while not asking any questions, here.

Since 2003, the ECDC African Community Center has helped hundreds of legally admitted refugees resettle in Las Vegas, often working with Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada and Nevada Partners to provide much-needed resources such as health insurance, language classes, job training and cash.

“One of the missions of the ECDC is to resettle and to help refugees, to integrate them fully in their new community and to help them find their way around in the new community, and to organize all the resources available, public and private, toward that end,” says Berihun Teferra, managing director of the African Community Center.

The center obtains funding from federal agencies such as the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which offers a variety of assistance programs. The programs’ qualifications vary, and the center sifts through the details to find funding sources for every refugee. The U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration also provides $1,100 of direct assistance for each refugee, which the African Community Center manages on their behalf.

Prior to the recession, the African Community Center saw 80 percent of its refugee clients placed in jobs within three months of arrival, which limited the amount of monetary assistance they needed. Now it usually takes six to nine months for refugees with training and knowledge of English to find work.

“Times are tough,” Teferra says. “Nevada is leading the nation in unemployment. That makes our task more difficult, but we’re not giving up. We have to do everything possible, and we are optimistic that the public is still generous.”

Private donations help bridge the gap when federal funding runs out, Teferra says. The African Community Center also relies on its partnerships with local hotel-casinos to find jobs for new refugees.

Yet, why is the State Department, the African Community Center, and ECDC (Ethiopian Community Development Council) continuing to resettle refugees to a state and city with such a high unemployment rates? Does it make any sense to do so? The ECDC and the African Community Center would no doubt protest that they would have to shut down operations in Nevada if the State Department were to cut the flow of refugees and federal funding, but at what price does this come to refugees to continue to resettle them to a place with such low employment prospects? What is more important, jobs for refugees or jobs for refugee resettlement workers? I guess we know th answer.

I also notice that the African Community Center’s managing director Berihun Teferra refers to private funding that her organization supposedly gathers for refugees, yet doesn’t give any details. This always seems to be the way it is with the private refugee resettlement agencies. They claim their involvement in the US refugee program is critically important as a “private sector” contribution, but give no information about what funds they actually give.

We know that these groups’ participation comes at a price to the refugees and the public, e.g. some of the agencies discriminate in hiring against the public and the refugees based on their religions. Also, the private resettlement contractors don’t have to answer to the public. They use layers of contractors and subcontractors, and the public is not able to look at their books the way we can with government agencies. So again, what are we getting for having to give up so much? How much do they actually give in real private funding?

Finally, a quick look at the State Department’s inspection report for the African Community Center indicates that they did not always bother to deliver the minimum-required items and services they contract to give, here.

Health screenings are often not done until well after the required first thirty-days. The African Community Center doesn’t give ready-made, culturally appropriate meals to the refugees upon their arrival after long intercontinental flights (refugees often haven’t eaten for two days because they are not familiar with food served on airlines). The agency jammed one refugee family into a small apartment that required seven children to sleep in one bedroom and violated local occupancy codes. Refugee families did not have minimum furnishings for their apartments — missing lamps, shower curtains, dresses. Refugees did not know that they had to report new addresses to Homeland Security. Case files were spotty (missing written records means possible missing services to refugees).

Posted in African Community Center (Las Vegas), Catholic Charities of Southern Nevada, discrimination in hiring, ECDC, employment/jobs for refugees, food, funding, furnishings, lack of, household items, missing or broken, housing, housing, overcrowding, Las Vegas, late health screenings, Nevada, public/private partnership, Rwandan, State Department | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

 
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 85 other followers