Exxon Mobile Intern

2016

REFUGEE MENTORSHIP REPORT VOLUNTEER

ALLIANCE FOR MULTICULTURAL COMMUNITY SERVICE

Month of June

1 OVERVIEW ACTIVITY REPORT

As a Refugee Mentorship Program Coordinator, my responsibilities and tasks have been very engageful as well

encompasses more than what all my title may entail. For the first day I was exposed to many different basic

core services the Alliance for Multicultural Community Service (AMCS) has to offer from pre-arrival to self-

sufficiency. From there on, my role as a mentor started to take flight, as I was collaborating alongside with the

culture orientation professor, Dr. Butoyi in assisting him with and guidance and leading the training for certain

educational subjects such as Health care, Community, Budgeting, Safety, Housing, and other academic success

subjects. For most of the time I was mainly responsible for mentoring 3 young orphans from Tanzania as they

had what so ever no English background so the level of understanding and literacy was different than other

groups of students which required a little more individual and direct attention.

In an effort to make our culture orientation more realistic and applicable, I worked with one of the case

managers, Sendet Seremba, to take the community members around town using the Metro Bus as most of

these families have never used the bus system and it is usually their only reliable source of transportation. I

showed them different common useful places that are normally visited and also visited, such as the

dentist/doctor’s office, grocery store, shopping center, car dealership, bank and a church. In addition, I also

made an activity sheet where they could write down specific objects within particular place we stopped at to

help them remember that for example a place that has food and other things for purchase is known as a

grocery store not a bank. Also in order to really connect with these people more closer and so they know

there way around town, we decided to go visit their home and meet their other family members. Some of

these community members include, Sammybrown Ndaziramiye, Mukabirori Asnath, Kanyeshuri Jean, and

Uwamahoro Phoibe.

During the afternoon timings until I get off, I go to the after school tutoring program known as the Kijana

Youth Program to help promote and provide helpful guidance on the path to higher education and career

counseling with whatever resources they are in need of. From my involvements through a special organization

called Community FE (for education), I have got together with the president and coordinated a day where they

will come and bring 3 to 4 college graduates from different universities to just educate the students on life

after high school and whatever questions they may have. In addition, also in the process of having a day to

tour the UH campus with an admission presentation and another informal presentation from the Dean of the

Business School there, basing from my previous experience with the Dean on a career development seminar.

Month of July

2 OVERVIEW ACTIVITY REPORT

As my time period comes to an end, one life taking outcome I have gained and learned from this “internship”

was the idea of building a life, not a resume. This month has been very bitter sweet but overall aside from all

the number of tasks and objectives or projects that were assigned to me, the humbling experience and smiles

that I have encountered from different countries because of my soft touching heart brings more than

happiness to me, it brings joy to my life and hope for those families that literally arrive here in America with

absolutely no valuable tangible assets just intellectual skills and eager to be successful.

From this month I’ve got to encounter two different families from two different views and side of the world,

Afghanistan and Democratic Republic of Congo. Now the reason I specifically mention these two families is

because of their size and their determination to participate and attend the cultural orientation that we

conduct early in morning from 9am -12pm. The Afghan family consist of 8 members and the Congo family

consist of 9 members. One interesting thing that I observed from these two families in when there both in the

same room together, and there just staring at each other, and I believe the reason being is that both of these

family have never witnessed or seen what diversity looks like or even what another race is perceived like other

than their owns. In addition, other than helping assist or teach different people that have different levels of

literacy rate I also got the opportunity to listen to one of these family members story and what brought them

to America with the amount of pressure to succeed especially from 6 or 7 kids. After observing from the family

of 8, for a few days I saw that the father carried a normal Fiesta grocery bag with him to class that had all their

notebooks and belongings (in an effort to use it as a backpack), and I thought to myself that they shouldn’t

have to struggle this way. So I went home and found a small over the shoulder carry-on bag that I had no

longer needed and took it to work next day and handed it to him. From this small gesture, it went from having

25% determination to 100% after viewing his smile. This was tested a few days ago when he was in front of me

and I looked at the handbag and made eye contact with him, he had proudly shook my hands with a gracefully

smile while telling me, “thank you so much” even with a minimal amount of English. I had never felt a better

enlighten feeling than this, it was as if I had given a poor person a million dollars. The lesson that was learned

from this was that you get what you give.

Now switching over to another department, the Kijana Scholars, and to show them the true value of what we

as volunteers do, and what it feels like to do community service, I decided to reach out to the Memorial

Herman Park. This was for two reasons, to show them that Houston has nice elegant parks and the location.

Locations reasoning was because to have a little incentive for the students to volunteer and basically rack and

pull out weeds from the Japanese Garden, we had also got 30 complimentary tickets to go to the Houston Zoo.

So I had managed to accomplish two things in a matter of a day. I believe we had the best turnout and

participation from this summer’s past 5 or 6 field trips. A grateful intuition that I was able to extract from

these group of kids, was when one day the Kijana Program coordinators had insisted that they have a mini

pizza party for the kids, and with my so often consumption of pizza, I was not really complaining but more or

so just had a reaction of “why pizza?, don’t yall get tired of that, it’s too basic and common”. Due to the

reason that I used to consume it almost on a daily basis back in college during my freshmen year. But I came to

realize that these students have never encountered any other nourishments other than the food bank as it

was their primary source of food and nutrients. So when they had ordered the pizza, and it was delivered the

excitement was surreal and the synergy in the room grew, within minutes the boxes were all empty. It was

almost as close to witnessing what hunger could look like. So from that moment on, I was always grateful for

pizza and never complained.

Reflection: Even though my time is over, I have made a commitment that I will sooner or later come back to

check on things and create some more opportunities for them. During my few weeks here, I was able to increase

the number of events through different planning skills be developing, implementing, and coordinating activities.

Needless to say, from me having a global mindset, as well as having prior refugee experience, I have added more

layers on my global knowledge by working directly with refugees coming from diverse professional, cultural,

and socioeconomic backgrounds. Through the empowerment of intellectual, spiritual, physical and mental not

only was I able to have a deeper connection but I was able to make the connection and getter a more thorough

insight on the process they have to go through. This was witnessed when I was given the opportunity to go and

pick up a family from the IAH airport that came from Malaysia with a case manager, and had to wait a little more

than an hour as they had to go through the IOM (International Organization for Migration) checkpoint process.

Likewise stated in the beginning of my term, the objective of enhancing the marketing and community

outreach/engagement has been reached and now I am able to have a High Definition clear understanding of the

role and understanding of the refugee resettlement agency as well as the nonprofit operation. Overall working

with the resettlement program, and as it is the face of this agency, I have concluded that the main/overall

mission and vision for the “community members” is to assist and provide refugees the utmost appropriate

cultural and linguistic core services in order to enable a self-sufficient mind through education of shared learning

and by a step by step cooperative process.

Document created to send out to all staff (case managers) for notifying the schedule for the new Nutrition Program so their clients can attend.

Texas A&M AGRILIFE

Nutrition Program Schedule for AMCS

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday

18th : Session 1 (9:30 am-11am)

19th 20th : Session 2 (9:30

am-11am)

21st 22nd

25th : Session 3 (9:30 am -11am)

26th 27th : Session 4 (9:30 am -11am)

28th 29th

M/O August

1st 2nd 3rd 4th 5th

8th : Session 5 (9:30 am -11am)

9th 10th : Session 6 (9:30 am -11am)

11th 12th

15th : Session 7

(9:30 am -11am)

*Last Session

16th 17th 18th 19th

Worksheet created for the time when I take clients around town on bus so they can explore and gain knowledge

of what certain common places look like.

Proposal made to do something simple but special, as this is still In the working process.

Volunteer

10130 Almeda Genoa

Houston, TX 77075

January 1, 2016

Alliance for Multicultural Community Service

Volunteer Houston

12425 Chimney Rock Road Suite 250

Houston, TX 77035

Dear Alliance for Multicultural Community Service:

To honor all that has been done and accomplished from the start of their arrival in the United States of

America to this point and forward, to show generosity of our time commitment and heart for our full support

in their endeavors and goals, and lastly to be grateful for the existence of refugees or our community

members and whatever possessions they have brought along in an effort to create something simply but

special.

On August 20th, 2016 I want to share my birthday with the people who have directly not only impacted me

but who have also touched their lives within these past few weeks to create a special birthday event like they

have always wished or pictured on this day. We can play different cultures birthday song and then at last we

can have the American version be heard to recognize the American Culture.

As far as logistics, any people are encouraged to attend, especially the interns within this Community Summer

Program, and we could ask any individual coming to bring a universal gift within the price range of $5-10

(August 5-7th is Tax Free Weekend), but preferably something to deal with “back to school” gear. As far as the

refugees, we can invite our community members, and all the kids from the after school program. To cover the

cost for the number of cakes and other miscellaneous products (balloons/ table covers/ paper

products/utensils) we can fill out and apply for a Community Donation form from either HEB, Walmart, or

Kroger.

I am looking forward to your response!

Sincerely,

Volunteer

Outreach to Community For Education, an organization part of my high school where we as college students and

graduates give back to our community and pushing for higher education while empowering and supplying for

resources to those socioeconomically regions that are in at risk.

From the first leadership development seminars we had to go to after hearing the seminar from the dean of the

UH business school, I decided to contact them to see if we could have a similar layout but catered to the Kijana

program and then give them a tour of UH. As of now this is still in the process.

Community outreach to the Memorial Herman Park in order to volunteer at the Japanese Garden and do something

out of our comfort zone, and also got 30 complimentary tickets to the Houston Zoo.

Activity Documentation Log for the 8 week period.

A sample of the worksheet I created to input data for May and June of 2016 arrivals.