Hser Ner Moo Community and Welcome Center

This past Wednesday I had the awesome experience of volunteering at the Hser Ner Moo Community Center in South Salt Lake. Going into this experience I didn’t know what to expect. I knew that I would be helping out with various youth activities, but other than that I had no idea what the people were like, what the facility was going to be like, or what sort of service I would be doing. I was definitely in for a pleasant shock. For a little bit of background, The Hser Ner Moo Community & Welcome Center is one of the 9 neighborhood sites of Promise South Salt Lake. It was created after the tragedy that happened in March 2008. A little refugee girl from Burma named Hser Ner Moo was found dead near her apartment after she went missing. The Center was dedicated and is carrying her legacy to keep kids safe when they are out of school and to help refugee and immigrant families integrate in their new society. The Hser Ner Moo Community & Welcome Center empowers immigrants and refugees through the process of successful integration by facilitating access to resources, expanding networks and layers of service, creating opportunities for leadership, and by providing relevant, responsive services and support. When I went to the center this past Wednesday one of my classmates and I had the opportunity to help refugee students with their biology and math homework. It was so fun to be able to use the skills that I have been working on in school for so long, to be able to reach out and pay it back to my community. To go volunteer at the center there are no prerequisites other than a background check. The experience is priceless and I plan to go back frequently and really get involved. Not to be cliché, but it truly is a life altering experience. When you are able to step out of your comfort bubble and realize how much just a little bit of effort can change someones life, it changes your outlook on your own life. As said in the Book of Mosiah in the Book of Mormon, chapter 2, verse 17 “. . .When ye are in the service of your fellow beings ye are only in the service of your God.”

To volunteer at the Hser Ner Moo Community and Welcome Center contact:

Domoina Voniariso 801-466-3238

Raunde Everett 801-828-7245

Or by Email: hsernermoo@gmail.com

Or for many other great opportunites to work with refugees in Utah:

http://refugee.utah.gov/volunteer/opportunities.html

Vietnamese leave one trauma to find another.

Isn't it crazy how there can be so much going on in the world and you don’t even realize it? It isn’t until you take that brave step outside of your comfortable bubble that you can actually see the world for what it is. As I was looking through Salgado’s book, Migrations, I found a section titled “The Vietnamese Immigration.” I immediately thought of the Vietnam War that ended as taboo in America. But as I researched the stories of the refugees from that war I realized there was so much more behind it than the dishonor of American Soldiers. To start relatively at the beginning, Vietnam was colonized by France, but during the Second World War the French government collaborated with the Japanese until Japan overthrew the French to encourage Vietnamese Nationalism. Vietnam eventually declared independence but France wasn’t willing to give up their control, so war broke out. France lost and through the Geneva conference the country was split into a Communist North Vietnam and an American-backed South Vietnam. The Communist group Viet Cong planned to reunite Vietnam through communist rule. US troops mobilized along with multiple allies to try and resist the establishment of a communist government, until ceasefire was arranged.  This agreement was only respected for a short time however, because Saigon eventually fell to communist reign and united the country into the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. The war had horrible repercussions for the Vietnamese people and up to 2 million were killed and there was massive displacement of the civilian population. The term “boat people” came from those who would try and cross the South China Sea using a boat to escape the traumas of the communist reign. The number of boat people increased by four times and most ended up in refugee camps, 195,000 of these landing in the Hong Kong detention centers in the photographs. And that is where the pictures come into the story. For the first while as the boat people were arriving they would be taken to various countries such as US, Canada, Britain, and Australia. But as the boat people were arriving by the thousands every month a law was adopted that declared all newcomers as illegal immigrants and they were sent to a detention center if they were not screened as a political refugee by the United Nations. The conditions inside of these detention centers are horrific. 

Women and girls are raped, both children and adults are tortured, and the food was scarce. It breaks my heart because there is a statue of liberty standing at the entrance of one of the detention centers symbolizing how some people dream to make it to America, and that is all that these people want. They left their country to make it to a better situation, only to find them in a prison. The picture that impacted me the most was of the children. In the description it says that “inside this prison there are thousands of children who have never seen a dog, a cow, a horse, or a garden. Their school inside the detention center is behind bars; their lives like those of their parents, are surrounded by concrete, iron fences, and barbed wire.” I can’t even imagine living my entire life without ever really experiencing anything. These poor people aren’t really welcome anywhere, they left their home country, but they aren’t accepted in their new country so they have no real purpose for themselves. This entire nation of people has suffered while I sit in a heated room with electronics and friends and I had no idea that this is what goes on the opposite of the world. It’s all a matter of going out and finding out what really is going happening. “The key to the future is understanding the present.”

Works Cited

Salgado, Sebastião. "Russian Immigrants." Migrations: Humanity in Transition. New York: Aperture, 2000. 61-73. Print.

"Vietnam Divided." Through My Eyes. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Sept. 2012. http://www.throughmyeyes.org.uk/server/show/nav.23334

Russian Immigrants find refuge through the arts.

In 1987 Brighton Ballet Theater of the School of Performing Arts, now called Brighton Ballet Theater: School of Russian American Ballet, was established by Irina Roizin based on 3 principles;

“1. To provide an affordable and professional dance education and performance opportunities to all students, regardless of talent, ability or ethnic background;

“2. to serve as a community cultural oasis;

“3. to create a common ground through dance so children, of many ethnic and immigrant communities can interact and study other cultures through classical ballet and folk dances”.

The Brighton Ballet Theater is a non-profit organization and is supported by the American Jewish community which also supports cultural and educational programs, day-care centers, and kindergartens for Russian children. In 1987 the first class was taught to 5 young girls and now has over 250 students in their programs.

The first to settle at Brighton Beach were European war survivors who came in the late forties and early fifties. While there were other groups to go through the area, the latest group of Russian immigrants happened in the nineties, after the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., which is actually the reason the founder of the Theater was in New York. The theater has and is still currently serving as an escape for Russian immigrants from the chaos of their surroundings. As said by Dancer Magazine, "... the BBT is trying to restore & revive the heritage and best tradition of the Russian Dance Culture." Through Ballet, the immigrants are able to keep a connection to their traditions, when all others are broken.

Having done ballet for the majority of my life I can truly testify that it is a relief from the stress of that day. I can only imagine how great it must be for the immigrants to be able to have time where amid their adaptations to living in America, they can go back and connect to their traditional Russian culture. Another great feature of the program is that the instructors of the BBT are all professionally trained, thus giving these refugees a real chance of going on with their skills and having the potential of going pro. The theater not only provides an escape, but also provides a sense of hope that they really do have a chance of making a new life that is successful.

The theater’s ultimate goal is to not only provide these children in difficult situations with opportunity, but also to help them understand numerous different cultural backgrounds.

*The image is from Salgado's book on Immigrants, and was taken in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, NY in 1994.

Works Cited

Salgado, Sebastião. "Russian Immigrants." Migrations: Humanity in Transition. New York: Aperture, 2000. 56-57. Print.

http://nymag.com/guides/everything/brighton-beach/

http://www.brightonballet.com/sch_mission.htm

http://www.brightonballet.com/sch_history.htm

Introduction.

I am a currently a student at BYU and for my Writing and Rhetoric class we are trying to inform others of the unheard stories of refugees. We will be researching various groups and studying photographs from Salagado's book Migrations: Humanity in Transition. I will be posting weekly about varying groups found in my research. Also, we will be volunteering at refugee camps located in our very own Utah and Salt Lake Valleys. So I invite you to look at those opportunities and consider going out and volunteering. "Truth does not change, only our awareness of it" -Attallah Shabazz. The first step to improvement is awareness. The Key to the future is understanding the past and present.