CALIFORNIA REFUGEE HEALTHY MARRIAGE PROJECT
VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1
C R H M P : B u i l d i n g B r i d g e s f o r C a l i f o r n i a ’s R e f u g e e s SPRING 2009
Inside this issue: VCDI: Celebrating the Year of the Ox with Oakland’s Vietnamese
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CAA: A Holistic Approach to Hard Times
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SAC: Babies and Bumps in the Road
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SLFC: Up Close with Sacramento’s Hmong
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CRHMP Crossword
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Welcome to the California Refugee Healthy Marriage Project—a statewide coalition of five community based non-profit organizations that provides marriage enrichment educational programs and activities to strengthen refugee couples and families. Since becoming a grantee of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in 2003, the CRHMP has trained thousands of refugees and asylees in communication and conflict resolution, cultural adaptation, decision-making and parenting skills. “We see our work as building a bridge between a refugee’s culture and American culture as well as between family members,” explains Lao Family’s CRHMP Coordinator Samantha Miller. “Cultural conflicts can take a
heavy toll on relationships at home. Our workshop facilitators are adept at providing participants with the best communication practices in this culture, in a context and language they can understand to help ease their transition to a new life and maintain stable relationships.” In creating the coalition, leadagency Lao Family selected partners based on their track record as leaders in service provision as well as on the diversity and need of the populations they serve. You can read about their work in the following pages. “I’m very proud of the work we’ve done so far and hope we can extend our services to new incoming populations in the future” Miller says. “It’s my hope that every refugee population in California can have access to the
California Refugee Healthy Marriage Project sites: Sacramento, Oakland and Long Beach
relationship-building tools we’re able to share through ORR’s program.
2 3 r d & 1 2 t h : A N ew H o m e f o r O u r “ F a m i ly ” California Refugee Healthy Marriage Project Who We Are: Lao Family Community Development RHM Project Coordinator: Samantha Miller (smiller@lfcd.org); (510) 533-8850
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Vietnamese Community Development, Inc. RHM Program Director: Chau Vo (minhchau@pacbell.net) Cambodian Association of America RHM Program Director: Dany Chea Sok Man (dmanchea@yahoo.com) Slavic Assistance Center RHM Program Director: Roman Romaso (romanromaso@yahoo.com) Sacramento Lao Family Community, Inc. Program Director: Seng Her (sadaosengher@yahoo.com)
In 2008, Lao Family Community Development, Inc. acquired a 30,000 sq. ft. building down the street from its present location in Oakland to establish the San Antonio Neighborhood Resource Center. When fully renovated, this mixed-use building will house Lao Family’s headquarter office and its nine programs, including employment, home ownership, and refugee healthy marriage. The site will also be
home to the CRHMP library, a clearinghouse for refugee-specific and mainstream family and marriage enrichment resources. Workshop curricula, videos/ DVDs, books, research studies and articles will be available to Lao Family’s sub-grantee agencies, and local service providers, in an effort to increase awareness of the Healthy Marriage program and arm them with timely material on relationship topics so they
can play a greater role in strengthening California’s couples and families.
2325 E. 12th Street (at 23rd Avenue), Oakland, CA
CALIFORNIA REFUGEE HEALTHY MARRIAGE PROJECT
V i e t n a m e s e C o m mu n i t y D eve l o p m e n t , I n c . : C e l e b r at i n g t h e Ye a r o f t h e O x w i t h O a k l a n d ’s V i e t n a m e s e For the Vietnamese, its Christmas, Thanksgiving and the 4th of July rolled into one. It’s Tet, the Vietnamese New Year, and VCDI knows how to celebrate it. On January 17th, VCDI opened its doors to 125 guests from the San Francisco Bay Area, including newly arrived refugees anxious to spend their most important holiday in a comfortable setting. “It’s our biggest event of the year, and every year it gets bigger!” said Trung Nguyen, VCDI’s founder, noting that the occasion provided the opportunity to introduce those new to the center about the Healthy Marriage program. Chau Vo, VCDI’s Healthy Marriage Program Director signed up 30 new refugees for her February workshops but found the cultural holiday more than just an effective recruitment tool.
“Tet is a time for family reunions, seeing friends and letting go of the previous year’s troubles. And just like Americans, Vietnamese make New Year’s resolutions: stop smoking, help my spouse more, be a better listener, etc.” Chau Vo found Tet to be the perfect backdrop for lessons imparted in her Healthy Marriage workshops. “The conversations in those workshops were very centered on what participants could do to put their resolutions into practice. Anyone can make a resolution to be a better spouse, but if you don’t have the tools for better communication or how to handle conflicts that come up in your marriage, then it doesn’t matter. Now they have the tools to succeed.”
Chau Vo plans to check back with her workshop participants in a few months to see how they are doing with their resolutions. “My goal was to help refugees use our own customs to start conversations about making lasting commitments to building healthy family relationships and ensuring this attitude remains throughout the year.” Judging from early feedback from spouses, this year the resolutions have a chance of sticking.
VCDI has been serving Vietnamese refugees and immigrants in Oakland for 15 years. In addition to their Healthy Marriage program, they have partnered with local agencies on health education initiatives and have an active seniors program.
Cambodian Association of America: A Holistic Approach to Hard Times The stories are familiar now. People losing homes, their jobs, their savings. On top of these hardships, one thing Refugee Healthy Marriage Program Director Dany Chea Sok Man doesn’t want Cambodians to lose is their relationships. “Cambodians have some of the lowest average household inProgram Director and facilitator comes in Long Beach, and fear of losing what little they have can be Dany Man leads a role-play especially frightening,” Man remarks. “These material losses can negatively affect emotional states, fast. My job is to make sure couples are able to keep their conversations on low heat throughout their relationships so that when times of crisis come, their emotions won’t boil over.” PAGE 2
Over the last several months, Man has seen workshop conversations turn increasingly from general family disagreements to stresses over financial issues. But no matter what the causes are, the reactions are the same: spouses fight, say hurtful things and feel more and more alienated from each other. “My words of advice to Cambodians at this time is: stay calm, listen to each other and understand the situation before attacking one another” Man adds.
guide clients to other services that can help with their physical needs, she can support the emotional ones. “Agency-wide events, which we started last year, have been very successful,” Man remarks. “We had a great turn-out for our Fall event and it also allowed me to find many recruits for the Refugee Healthy Marriage program. Now more than ever the extensive services of our organizations are important, and we're happy to meet the demand!”
One solution CAA has developed to help clients in the most comprehensive way possible is to use their programs to support each other. Man takes advantage of CAA’s other programs to help those hardest hit. If she can
Incorporated as a non-profit in 1975, CAA is the oldest and largest Cambodian organization in the United States. It provides direct services through 17 programs to the Hispanic, African-American, Asian and Caucasian communities.
CALIFORNIA REFUGEE HEALTHY MARRIAGE PROJECT VOLUME 1, ISSUE 1
Going s-on in Sacramento ... S l av i c A s s i s t a n c e C e n t e r : B ab i e s a n d B u m p s i n t h e R o a d Since launching their Healthy Marriage program in 2003, Slavic Assistance Center has built lasting partnerships with local agencies that have an aligned mission to build strong families. Their collaboration with the Christian clergy and the crisis intervention provider WEAVE has allowed them increased access to the Slavic refugee population of over 150,000. But no partnership is more valuable to new and expecting refugee mothers than that with Birth & Beyond, a family resource center that provides support to parents through classes, family activities and home visitations. As part of the Birth & Beyond program, SAC has been able to extend their lessons to a vulnerable
population – young adults facing the dual stress of acculturation and having a child in a new country. The need is obvious: class attendance is rarely under 30. A driving force behind the workshops’ popularity is Ivan Leshchuk, a facilitator uniquely qualified for the job. A reverend pastor and former consultant for the Slavic Mental Health Project, Ivan has years of experience counseling community members on marriage and divorce, depression, and intergenerational issues and is greatly respected in the Slavic community. But it’s Leshchuk’s personal journey that makes him most accessible to workshop attendees. A refugee from the Ukraine in
2002, Leshchuk and his wife had the last of their three children in the U.S. He shares the lessons he learned as a first time father in discussions on How to Help your Marriage Survive a New Baby. “Refugee couples need each other more than ever when adjusting to a new country. But when a new child comes along, attention can shift from a husband to a child, and that’s hard to take” Leshchuk states. “I help couples realize that the distance they feel is temporary and share what my wife once said to me: ‘I love you with all my heart, but I’m a little distracted right now. Don’t worry – I’ll be back.’ Open communication has been the key to our happy marriage. I literally practice what I preach!”
Facilitator Ivan Leshchuk working with Birth & Beyond
For seven years, SAC has filled critical gaps in access to services for low-income Slavic immigrants and refugees in Sacramento and works closely with a network of 35 local churches.
S a c r a m e n t o L a o F a m i ly C o m mu n i t y, I n c . U p C l o s e w i t h S a c r a m e n t o ’s H m o n g In 2005 Wang Seng Her and his wife Phoua Xiong moved to the U.S. from a Thai refugee camp. Seng Her, Program Director for the Refugee Healthy Marriage program at SLFC sat down with Wang to discuss his challenges to building a new life here and how the “Power of Two” marriage workshops have helped keep his family together.
A: When we first arrived, everything was difficult. Our family had been divided, and our teenagers were already adapting to the American way of life and resisting our Hmong traditions. We felt we were losing control of them. This lead to misunderstandings and conflicts between us. I got very stressed and my health started to deteriorate.
Q: How long have you been married?
Q: How did you hear about the Healthy Marriage workshops?
A: We don’t know exactly how many years, but we have nine children together. But only two of our children — both teenagers — came with us to the U.S.
A: I went to SLFC for help in getting a doctor’s appointment and met you. You told me about how the workshops could help me improve my relationships with my children as well as my mental and physical health.
Q: What have been the greatest difficulties in living in the U.S.?
Q: Did they help?
A: Yes. Adjusting to this new culture is still very difficult, but we are working on it. But since the class, stress between family members has decreased about 40% and we are much more sensitive to each other’s feelings and opinions. The tools we’ve learned, especially learning to speak up instead of hinting when you have a problem, and learning to listen have been very helpful. This is a new way of communicating for our culture since we usually don’t like to discuss negative topics. But in this country, people are more open about discussing their feelings — both good and bad — and that helps relieve rather than build up tension. It’s worked for us and we’re grateful.”
SLFC is one of only two Mutual Assistance Associations in Sacramento catering specifically to the Hmong population. For the last 26 years, they have been providing Southeast Asian as well as Russian refugees with English language, employment and citizenship services.
Wang Seng Her and wife Phoua Xiong
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2325 East 12th Street, Oakland, CA 94601
CRHMP Crossword: Test your knowledge of Healthy Marriage and Refugee topics in California! Be the first entrant to submit all the correct answers to: Samantha Miller, Lao Family Community Development, 2325 East 12th Street, Oakland, CA 94601, and win a prize. ACROSS: 1. The number of languages spoken by staff at CAA 5. According to the 2008 The State of California’s Unions survey, the two most common reasons for divorce are lack of commitment and lack of this important skill 7. This Southeast Asian population comprised one of the largest groups of refugees to California in 2008 8. In 2007, the largest % of refugees (behind California) were settled in this Southern state DOWN: 2. According to the 2008 The State of California’s Unions survey, the majority of Californians agree in support of teaching relationship skills to this age group as part of their high school education 3. SLFC is the only agency providing all Healthy Marriage workshops in this language 4. SAC provides its services through a network of 35 of these religious institutions 6. The word for LOVE in Vietnamese
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www.CrosswordWeaver.com
Sources: Department of Homeland Security Office of Immigration Statistics, Annual Flow Report: July 2008; The State of California’s Unions — Copyright 2008 by California Healthy Marriages Coalition; Department of Social Services, Alameda County
The California Refugee Healthy Marriage Project is funded in large part with federal funds through the Office of Refugee Resettlement, Administration of Children & Families, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (Grant No. 90ZF0048). All content expressed herein is solely derived from program staff and does not necessarily reflect the views of any federal agency