CAAAV and NMCIR-Bronx Project have partnered to provide FREE

Immigration Consultation
US Citizenship Application
Low-cost Adjustment of Status
Low-cost Family-based Petitions

Where: CAAAV  Office, 2473 Valentine Ave.
(Fordham Rd. at 188th St.), Bronx, NY 10458
(Available by the BX 12 bus)
When:    Last Wednesday of every Month
(July: Wed 28th, August: Wed 26th, Sep Wed 30th)
Time:  10 am- 2pm
Email: ylp@caaav.org
Phone: (718) 220-7391 ext.16,

For Vietnamese: Minh-Hà, For Khmer: Chhaya

Please note that if you are at least 50 years old and have lived in the US as a legal permanent resident for 20 years or if you are at least 55 years old and have lived in the US as a legal permanent resident for 15 years you are eligible to take the Citizenship Exam in your native language and the exam is oral – not written

CAAAV kết hợp NMCIR-Bronx Project
cung cấp dịch vụ
FREE- miễn phí
về
Tư vấn Luật Di trú
Hồ sơ xin Nhập Tịch
Hồ sơ xin Thẻ Xanh (lệ phí thấp)
Hồ sơ xin Bảo Lãnh Thân Nhân (lệ phí thấp)
Địa điểm:    Văn phòng CAAAV
2473 Valentine Ave.
(Fordham Rd. và 188th St.), bus Bx12
Bronx, NY 10458
Thời gian:    Thứ Tư cuối cùng mỗi tháng
(Tháng 7: ngày 29, Tháng 8: ngày 26, Tháng 9: ngày 30)
10:00 sáng – 2:00 chiều
Email: ylp@caaav.org
Phone: (718) 220-7391 ext.16
Tiếng Việt: Minh-Hà  Tiếng Khmer: Chhaya

posted by Matt Anderson, MD

The Youth Leadership Project organizers

There has been snow continuously on the ground in New York since before New Year, a somewhat rare occurrence in these days of global warming.  And saturday, January 31st was a particularly cold night.  As one approached the basement of the St. Nicholas Tolentine church, a few brave souls stood outside smoking cigarettes and talking on cell phones.

Inside was the first annual fund-raising dinner of the Youth Leadership Project, a  South East Asian community group.  A dozen or so large round tables were spread around a long white room.  At the tables was a happy crowd made up mainly of Cambodian immigrants. The room was filled with the sounds of people greeting friends.  They saluted each other by putting their hands together as if in prayer and making a slight bow.  Little kids zoomed in and out from a neighboring “children’s” room,  mingling briefly with the adults and then returning.   A small bar in the corner did a brisk business while people waited for the evening to start.

Chhaya and Khamarin, two of the YLP organizers, started the evening with a brief introduction to the Youth Leadership Project and appeals for help with two current projects.  One is the Justice is Healing project (covered in detail in our blog of October 15, 2008); the other is a planned community center (more details below).  They spoke in English and then Chhaya’s mother Ousara Phok,  got up and translated their speech, a “translation” that involved copious thanks to many of the people sitting in the room.

The speeches were accompanied by a three course meal from Huynh Catering Services.   The Huynh family, originally from Cambodia, has a long tradition of catering and Victor, we were informed, “does all the Cambodian weddings.”

With the speeches over, the very serious business of dancing began.  Monorom, “one of the best Cambodian bands”, had been invited from Philadelphia and clearly knew what music the audience wanted to hear. Very quickly the dance floor was full.  There were several different types of dances.   Madison looked something like a line dance and can be seen at this link.  Next came the circle dance (ramvong) a slow dance in which the dancers made elaborate movements with their hands as their hips swung slowly from right to left and back.  Genders alternated in the circle. It was explained that in the old times unmarried people were not allowed to touch as they danced, thus the physical separation created by the circle.  Finally, the Saravan dance which seemed to draw the most enthusiastic crowd.

We found a few minutes to catch up with Khamarin, one of the YLP leaders.  He is a 20 year old student at New York College of Technology with plans to become a X-ray technician.  He was born in the US and wasn’t entirely sure where in Cambodia his parents were born.  His mother, he thought, came from Battambang and his father from a very small village.

Khamarin’s first experience in organizing came in 1999 when his aunt, a YLP

Chhaya and Khamarin

organizer had been campaigning against the welfare reforms of the Guliani administration.  (This campaign was the subject of a film “Eating Welfare” made by CAAV: Organizing Asian Communities, the parent of YLP).  Khamarin was quite young at the time but could not help being impressed by the fact that his aunt had brought people to the community to help.  Thinking back now, he remembers how his elderly grandmother had started doing piecework about the time of the welfare cuts.   She sewed small hair bands (scrunchies) in her apartment.  He thought she was doing it as a hobby, but later he realized how many women in the community were doing this kind of piece work.  “They would do the sewing and then the kids would cut the bands apart and sort them into piles.”

In  2001, 2002 the YLP organized ACE  gatherings: Arts, Community, Empowerment.  “We would be broken up into little groups and have to cook an entire Asian meal right there,” he said, “You would interact with people who you wouldn’t normally meet.”  He learned about “the whole other side of the world.” This led him to training in community organizing and in 2006 he participated in the community health survey that was part of the “Justice is Health” campaign.  He would knock on doors and ask questions about health problems and experiences with the medical system.  health.  He remembered one elderly woman.  “My Khmer is not all that good, but it was enough to understand her.”  She told him that it had been 5 or 6 years since she had seen a doctor. She had complaints. Back pains, leg pains and recurrent nightmares going back to the war.  But it was too much trouble to go to the clinic and have no one there who would understand you.  And if she had to take the children to translate, they would miss school.

We discussed YLP’s vision of a community center.  The YLP house at 2473 Valentine Ave now serves as an unofficial community center and people gather there for holidays.  But it is small for the group’s ambitions.  They hope to create a Mekong Center that will serve local southeast Asians, not just Cambodians.  It would be place to teach cooking, sewing, gardening, art, and dance. “These are our people’s skills, even though here they  are not looked on as skills.” A group of urban planning students from Hunter College had helped them out.  As a school project the students had created plans for rebuilding the current house into a real community center.  Estimated cost: $2 million.  Now it was YLP’s job to figure out what they would do with the plans.

Khamarin said that he had never been to Cambodia.  He is afraid of flying.  What he knew of Cambodian history he had learned from YLP.  His schooling had not taught him much about his parent’s native country.

The Cambodian community in the Bronx has suffered multiple traumas.  But this was not in evidence last Saturday night.

posted by Matt Anderson, MD

]]> http://www.socialmedicine.org/2009/02/06/community-health/cambodian-circle-dancing-on-a-frigid-bronx-night/feed/ 2 http://www.socialmedicine.org/2008/10/15/community-health/justice-is-healing/ http://www.socialmedicine.org/2008/10/15/community-health/justice-is-healing/#comments Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:56:29 +0000 bronxdoc http://www.socialmedicine.org/?p=152

Event Organizers: Chhaya Chhoum , Joyce Wong, and Ousara Phok

On Friday, September 19, 2008 we had the opportunity to attend a community health forum organized by the Southeast Asian community of the North West Bronx. The forum, entitled “Justice is Healing,” was the work of a local community group, the Youth Leadership Project (YLP).

The setting for the forum was the beautiful new Bronx Library Center off of Fordham Road. In a large meeting space below the entrance, mothers tended to noisy toddlers and infants in strollers. Hot Cambodian and Vietnamese food was served on long tables alongside literature about various immigration related campaigns. Inside the Library’s auditorium some 200 participants listened to a full evening’s worth of speakers. Most were southeast Asian immigrants from community. However, it was heartening to see faces of all complexions amongst the public. The presentations were translated into three languages: Khmer, Vietnamese, and English. Despite this often laborious process interest remained high throughout the 3 hour program and people left energized.

YLP, established in 1996 by the CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities (aka the Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence), has been working for several years to address the needs of several thousand primarily Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees. (See our posting on Agent Orange.) These refugees were settled in our part of the Bronx is the early 1980′s. Many had suffered tremendous losses in their home countries. In some cases, their entire family had been killed. They had spent years living in refugee camps. Now they found themselves in some of the most troubled areas of the Bronx, not speaking English (or Spanish!) and with limited social services. Many suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, a problem aggravated by neighborhood violence. In one, very public case, a young Cambodian, Kim Hong Tim, was murdered as he drove his taxi in the spring of 2000.

Local organizations reached out to help. The Montefiore Family Health Center – a federally funded Community Health Center – established an Indochinese Mental Health Program in collaboration with the Montefiore Department of Psychiatry. This Program became a lifeline for many patients. Providing much more than simply mental health, workers in the program coordinated care with the clinic’s physicians and hooked people into community resources. CAAV organized the YLP to address the damage caused by “welfare reform” in the mid-90′s. As part of this effort, YLP produced a film – Eating Welfare – which chronicles the situation in the community at the time.

Over the past two years, YLP has partnered with the NYU Center for the Study of Asian American Health to examine the health problems of local South East Asians. In 2007 YLP interviewed and surveyed 150 residents, asking them about their major health problems and their concerns regarding health care. The results of this survey can be found at the following sites:

Cambodian Community: http://www.med.nyu.edu/csaah/research/ethnic.html#cambodian_chnra
Vietnamese Community: http://www.med.nyu.edu/csaah/research/ethnic.html#vietnamese_chnra

As a result of this survey YLP made five key recommendations:

1. Improved language access and translation services.

2. Availability of complementary and alternative treatments.

3. Outreach and education programs linking trauma and diabetes.

4. Workforce development (i.e. hiring and training of southeast Asian community members).

5. Integration of health and social services

Many community members spoke at the event, detailing their experiences with healthcare in the Bronx. A common theme was difficulties with translation. In some cases children were used as translators. This is highly problematic because children should not be involved in certain health care discussions. Children may not know their parent’s language sufficiently well to function as medical translators. Using phone translators is also problematic because they are often not skilled in specific medical terms nor do they know the context of a conversation.

In the long term, the YLP would like to see a comprehensive war survivors clinic, a resource that would be of value to many communities in the Bronx. The demands of the YLP are very much in agreement with the vision of community health. The responsibility of health professionals extends beyond simply treating disease when it shows up in the office. The job of a community health center is to reach out to the surrounding community and particularly to the most vulnerable parts of the community. It addresses not just medical problems but also the multiple social and health issues of its community.

For additional coverage of this event, see the 10/2/2008 article in the Norwood News by Rebecca Chao. You can also listen to a radio report entitled Welcome to the Health Forum made by Radio Rootz.