By: Lucy Spence (Panama ’18-’20)
RPCV Voices is a blog series on the Peace Corps Community for Refugees website. The purpose is to allow returned Peace Corps Volunteers the opportunity to share their experience as refugees, work with refugee communities, or opinions about the refugee crisis. If you have a story to share, please email [email protected]
Refugee and Immigrant Self-Empowerment was born in 2004 in the living rooms of different members of the Somali-Bantu Community. When Haji Adan moved to Syracuse NY to rejoin his father, he found not just a snowy sanctuary city, but a community of people from his own ethnic group who warmly welcomed him. This group began with informal gatherings in their homes to provide tutoring for their children. With time this organization grew to what is now, a flourishing non-profit with many community partners and a quickly growing staff who work tirelessly to keep up with the needs of a large New American population.
To rewind, Haji Adan was born in Somalia in 1982 in a beautiful farming village called Jabi. Nine years later, civil war erupted in Somalia when conflict broke out amongst warring clan leaders. The violence that ensued killed and wounded thousands of civilians. The people of Jabi heard news of the violence and offered shelter and supplies to individuals who passed through their community desperately seeking safety. Eventually, the fear and violence reached Jabi and a villager was killed.
At this point Haji’s family knew it was their turn to leave or else they would soon witness the atrocities they had seen so many others flee from. After 10 days of walking with no food or supplies all the while witnessing other families stopped on the side of the road unable to continue from sheer exhaustion, Haji and his family reached the Kenyan border where they were brought to a refugee camp. Unfortunately, this was not the end of the adversity they faced.
In the refugee camps, families faced food shortages, violence, lack of decent educational opportunities and more. Many children died of malnutrition, cholera, and malaria. Yet, Haji and his family survived in these poor conditions and made a home in the refugee camp for 14 years. Eventually, Haji was resettled in Bridgeport, Connecticut. This was a large step forward, but not without its own hindrances.
The drastic disparities between life in the US and life in Somalia and Kenya made everyday activities feel terrifying and many of the great opportunities available in the US felt out of reach. Haji and his family battled loneliness, lack of access, inability to understand English, and more while trying to create a new life. Despite barrier after barrier, Haji cultivated the sense of community that he had felt in Jabi in this new country; first in Hartford, Connecticut where he moved to reconnect with old friends and then in Syracuse, New York.
Nowadays Haji is the inspiration and driving force behind a non-profit organization with ceaseless ambition to find new ways to advocate for and empower the New Americans in the Greater Syracuse area. When asked about the most important part of RISE, Haji said “The ability to serve clients without appointments” in order to serve more individuals and overcome an unnecessary barrier.
RISE has several programs. Case management which works in employment services, interpretation, crisis mediation, first time home buying and more. Care management which works with healthcare navigation for individuals managing chronic conditions. The education program offers youth development programming and tutoring. Lastly, an agriculture program that gives individuals access to land and agriculture education so that they can improve their own access to culturally appropriate, healthy food.
These programs serve more than 400 individuals each year. During the COVID crisis, RISE has managed to not only stay open but to expand available services. Staff works to provide clients with everything from translations of media reports of health guidelines to provision of laptops and internet services so people can continue working and going to school and much more.
What sets RISE apart in upstate New York, and even across the US, is that RISE was started by New Americans to empower other New Americans to build and sustain the type of life that they have dreamed of since they were forced to leave their home countries. Haji has always believed that “when you empower people they will start believing in themselves and manage to attain goals they thought they would not achieve. If you merely help it is likely the same people will depend on you instead of them standing up for themselves.”
Both the board and the staff of RISE demographically represent the same individuals that are being empowered on a daily basis. Of the 30 people employed at RISE, 26 of them are New Americans. Haji says “when you hire New American staff, each person brings the language, richness in culture and most importantly have faced similar obstacles to any clients that come to the office. This way it gives the staff a sense of purpose, obligation to serve and clients would feel the center is a welcoming hometown association.”
This year RISE is thrilled at the prospect of a large increase in refugees coming to the US. Services offered as well as staff available are being ramped up in anticipation that more individuals will soon require services to navigate the complex systems here in the United States that exist around naturalization, access to land, SNAP and EBT benefits, and more. To learn more about RISE please visit the website or come attend the upcoming virtual Night of Nations RISE will proudly be hosting on April 22nd at 5:30 pm EST. If you are interested in donating to support this great organization you can do so here.