November 10, 2010
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Immigrants find work, self-worth through program by Clarence Schadegg Helping immigrants with disabilities find meaningful employment is a focus for the Disabled Immigrant Association (DIA). The organization has exceeded its goals of helping clients find employment, despite a tough economy. DIA’s ambitious employment program will further expand through a new focus on mentoring for the organization. DIA started in 2005 and has grown to include a cadre of programs including employment counseling, second language learning, and transportation to and from employment and medical appointments. A food shelf is operated in cooperation with Second Harvest Heartland. DIA also provides networking opportunities with a variety of organizations that provide support to people with disabilities. DIA received a state grant for 2009 and 2010 in which an employment counselor was hired to find a job for 42 people each year. Hared Mah, a University of Minnesota graduate with a degree in economics, was hired as the DIA employment counselor. Mah has ex-
ceeded the annual goal of clients. In a presentation Oct. 24 at Richfield United Methodist Church, Mah said he is currently helping 60 people with employment. A major struggle among immigrants with disabilities as to find and keep a job. Mah said convincing employers to hire immigrants with disabilities can be a tough sell. Another challenge is lowpaying jobs. DIA staff and volunteers have found that clients tend to seek employment in entry level positions but costs for daily living tend to be more than what is brought in financially. Participants need to earn enough to cover the basic costs of housing, food and clothing. Mah said another challenge is that some clients work while receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI), so the earned income cannot lead to the loss of benefits. Communication and language barriers have posed the greatest hurdle for immigrants. According to Mah all immigrants seeking employment need to have solid technical and communication skills not
only to get hired but to keep their jobs. Mental illness and the shame that is associated with it is another major obstacle for immigrants. Mah said mental illness is a common hidden disability among his clients. In some cases, clients’ family members returned to Somalia because of their fear of medical practices and what they see as the ubiquitous distribution of drugs in the United States. A program starting up at DIA to help as a link for people with disabilities is the mentoring of job-seekers. The range of support includes mentoring of immigrants with disabilities and their families. The mentors work with the DIA employment counselor. The establishment of a network of mentors will kick off next year. The DIA mentoring program will bring together people with varied skills and talents to help employers and employees who live with disabilities work through possible access issues. The mentors will play a pivotal role in the job retention of participants by keeping track
Hared Mah, left, helps a DIA client through the agency’s work program. Photo courtesy of DIA
of the employment progress made by each employed immigrant with a disability. The mentor will support the employment counselor at DIA and provide an additional support outside the area of the level of expertise of the DIA employment counselor. What are needed are mentors, positive role models, who fulfill an important need to guide immigrant people in meaningful and constructive
ways. The co-coordinators of the DIA mentoring program will oversee and build a network with area colleges and university programs for students with disabilities to bring in mentors who will guide all participating immigrant family members. DIA will also draw from its own membership list to find people who are capable to be mentors. The mentors will be trained to work with immigrant
families with concerns about employment, training, and funds to pay for food and housing, access, communication, literacy, transportation and other needs. To learn more about the Disabled Immigrant Association (DIA), contact DIA Executive Director Mahad Abdi, at mahad@dialink.org or call 612-619-5494. ■
Pete’s Reflections
Camera obscura part II: Paying the price for inspiration by Pete Feigal Maybe there is an alternative to Socrates’ “divine madness”: drunkenness, eroticism, dreaming. Look at our greatest artists. Michelangelo was a person with bipolar syndrome who portrayed himself as a flayed martyr in his paintings. Henri Matisse gave up a lawyer practice and became a painter because of appendicitis. Robert Schumann began composing only after his right hand was paralyzed, ending his concert pianist career. Cervantes’ career as a novelist came only after he was wounded at the battle of Lepanto. He was unemployable and so, sensible as he was, he became a tax collector, but in his vigor to be fair, he foreclosed on a Catholic Church . . . during the Inquisition. From prison, waiting for the sentence of either life or death, (a strong motivator for creativity,) he wrote “Don Quixote,” the most published book in history after the Bible. Frederick Nietzsche’s influence remains substantial within philosophical circles, notably in existentialism and post-modernism yet he went
insane from syphilis. Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood but was also bipolar and had uremia. Frida Kahlo’s work is celebrated in Mexico as emblematic of national and indigenous tradition. She contracted polio at age six, leaving her right leg thinner than the left. Lord Byron, an English poet and a leading figure in Romanticism, suffered with depression and a congenital deformed foot. El Greco had astigmatism, which is why he distorted human
bodies in paintings, stretching everyone’s arms and legs. Vincent Van Gogh, the Dutch postimpressionist, may have suffered from Ménière’s disease, an affliction of the inner ear that causes pain, disorientation, dizziness and misery. Some believe “Starry Night” illustrates his dizziness. When you see the painting in real life, you are almost disorientated with its beauty. I almost fainted when I first saw it, almost sucked into the whirling universe of stars. And you despair, too, because the light in
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the church steeple is out. The church is dark and dead, while the stars dance their courses. Have you ever lay on your back and stared at the stars? Sometimes you have to grab onto the Earth because it feels like everything is reversed and you are falling up. That’s what “Starry Night” does. Paganini, the greatest violin player that ever lived, struggled
with tuberculosis, depression, syphilis, kidney stones and inflammation in his jawbone or osteomyelitis of the jawbone. The doctors gave him mercury for the syphilis until all his teeth fell out, his skin turned grey-white and his hair fell out. He had Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, a congenital disease that left his joints so flexible he could touch his thumbs to
his wrists. He was a walking corpse. But when he played the violin, he was an angel. Imagine all of the portraits of the Saints, smiling, performing miracles as they are being tortured and killed, rapture on their faces as they transcend mortality itself in the moment of their greatest pain. Theodore Gericault painted Inspiration - cont. on p. 15