Hi Everyone,

Last Monday the weather was so crazy, because first it was sunny but then later it was so, so windy.  There was no second change to this interview so we had to go with that crazy weather.  On our way to the interview we almost killed ourselves when she was about collide with another car, because there was a car coming across the street and Michele didn’t see it.   When we arrived at the site and the interview started, it was the best interview that I have been to.   Cristina Curran was a great person because she was so sure of all her answers to us, but something that I really liked was that she never gave a “no” answer.   They do like the idea of posting information on UnLocal’s website and changing information every time it is needed.   They also gave us advice on what to do and where to go to get money for UnLocal’s organization.

When i first saw Michele I though she was little quiet, but after the interview I realize that she wasn’t. I was the one who was asking questions and Michele was the one who took notes, but she was talking more than anyone in the interview.

See you next time,

Alex Ariza

Thursday, May 22, 2008

On Thursday, the weather seemed unpredictable. That’s why I together with Michele decided to stay in the car and conduct an interview about CAMBA. Michele once worked for CAMBA, that’s why she was a perfect person to interview since we weren’t able to get an interview with their organization.

The organization is located in the neighborhood of Flatbush in Brooklyn. The main focus of CAMBA is to provide all kinds of social service to immigrants of New York City. The main social services that they provide are the work-force, legal services, housing, education for adults, homelessness, and food-bank.

CAMBA is one of the largest social providers out there, as they serve 2,000 to 3,000 clients a year. However, they would like to reach a lot more people. The organization uses different methods to reach people, such as the word of mouth, flyers, newspapers, and signs.

CAMBA is not only a great source of social services. It also provides many computer labs that are available to everyone. There are also computer training classes available, however, those are not happening too often.

Since the organization targets immigrants, they have a vast array of languages available to their clients. They offer English, Spanish, French, Haitian Creole, Mandarin, Russian, and Tibetan. English classes are also available for immigrants everyday.

I was happy to hear that there are organizations like CAMBA out there to help all the immigrants in need. Being new to a new country isn’t easy, that’s why all help, even a smallest one, is always useful.

Thank you, Michele, for taking your time to answer my questions.

Last Thursday, we went to the Brooklyn Midwood Library to interview one of the Brooklyn librarians. His name is Mr. Rosenberg. He is the manager of the Midwood library branch. During the interview, he explained to us many things about how people use the library. He also told us about some free courses that library provides for children and adults. He is a very nice man, he showed us about how to get more information from other Brooklyn branches. It was a very fun tour, when we finished visiting the branch, we went to eat bread and drank coffee on a nice sunny day…. Here are some pictures!

On April 17, 2008, we went to meet with an organization called Make the Road. Make the Road New York promotes economic justice, equity and opportunity for all New Yorkers through community and electoral organizing, strategic policy advocacy, leadership development, youth and adult education, and high quality legal and support services.(http://www.maketheroad.org)  Make the Road  helps Latino and African American communities in Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. The languages available in this organization are Spanish and English. Based on their location, we saw that many Spanish speaking people come there to ask for help. Make the Road provides many social services. For example: free English class, computer classes,citizenship classes, free legal advice, and advice on health services.

During our visit, we meet the Director of Health Advocacy. His name is Theo Oshiro. Theo started working on health advocacy a few years ago, so he gave us many suggestion about how to make UnLocal’s website better. The goal of UnLocal is to help immigrants communities with social services. We hope immigrants have a better life in the United States.Theo explained to us many things about Make the Road, like how they help people to solve problems; how people can become members of the organization. During the conversation, we learned many things about how to help immigrants to get what they want. Also the suggestions that he gave to us will be very valuable for UnLocal’s website.

Finally, we toured the places where they work. There was a long hall that has many small classes. These classes are for immigrants to study the English and do other activities. During our conversation, we heard one opera singer sing who lives above the office. Her voice was very high and made us scared sometimes!

March 31, 2008

Hello UnLocal supporters,

I’m thrilled to report that our internship program is up and running! We have four fantastic students from the International High School at Prospect Heights working with us: Alex, Ariel, Liwei and Michele. You’ll get to know them in this week’s blog entry. We plan to blog at least every two weeks to let you know how our research is going. Our blogging will be multilingual to reflect UnLocal’s commitment to a multilingual site.

For a description of the internship program’s goals, you can click here. The interns and I meet every Monday and Thursday from 12-4 p.m. at the Prospect Heights HS library. We’re hoping to find our own office space for April & May—we’ll keep you posted on how that goes!

Since I’m asking the interns to tell you about themselves, it’s only fair that I tell you a little bit about me. I’m a 26 year old graduate student at New York University. I’m studying public and nonprofit policy & management. I will receive my Masters in Public Administration (M.P.A.) this May. My professional passion is public education reform. I believe that education is the most powerful tool we can use to improve American society, and I want to be part of the policymaking process that affects public education. Rather than rest on our laurels, I think we must do everything in our power to make our public school system the best it can be. Whenever I feel frustrated or disillusioned by the immense challenges facing us, I remind myself of my one of my favorite quotations: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”-Margaret Meade. I apply this same attitude to our work at UnLocal.

That’s all for today. We’ll keep you updated as we make progress. Feel free to post any questions you have for us on the blog.

This is a picture of me and my parents, Lynn and Gerry Stein. Aren’t they cute? We liked this picture.

Hi! My name is Rong Zheng. I like people to call me Michelle. I am a 17 years old high school student at International High School @ Prospect Heights. In my school, there are many students that come from different countries. It’s a very cool place, I can learn many things in my school.

As a Chinese immigrant, I think the most important thing to let people to know about me is I want to be an immigration officer in the future. As an immigrant, I know how it felt to come to a new country, study about a new culture and learn about a new language. Studying political science in college and when I graduate form the college, I want to go to law school to learn more things about how to be an immigration officer. This is the goal that I set for my future life.

I like to read books. I believe that books can improve people’s knowledge and we always can learn something in books that we have never learned before in our real life. I also like to meet people. I think meeting people can help you improve your knowledge about the world. Different people have different thinking, these ideas that they have can help you a lot in the future, and it’s very helpful.

One thing that I am proud of myself about is that I know what I want; I know what my goal is. There are many people in the world that they don’t know what they want, they just waste their life. My father always told me that: “people must be known what they want and what they need. Once we have a goal, we need to step out the first step. Because when we know our first step, then we will find our way.” I always remember these words that my father told me, because it’s encourages me a lot. It’s also help me overcomes many obstacles that I need to face.

UnLocal is an organization that trying to help immigrant people in the New York City’s community. These services including health care services, legal services, educational services, employment services, etc. UnLocal is important because it’s will help immigrants people get as many benefits as they can. Many immigrants people in the U.S.A don’t know how to speak English. In the UnLocal organization, we can help them translate English to the native language; we also can help them find jobs, to make living in the U.S.A. It’s a very helpful organization to let immigrants have the opportunity to express themselves in the U.S.A.

Hello my name is Liwei Jiang. I’m from China. Now I was live in USA with my parents. I’m 17 years old student in 12th grade at International High School.

I’m really interested in design, photo and fashion, and to be a photographer is one of my goals I want to achieve in future. I am proud of myself is when I focus my interest and I feel more passion about my works. Even if it’s very hard, I still really want to work out a good grade until I succeed. I don’t feel that I have a lot of strength, but I would say as more I learn as the more skills I will own it. I think this design skills can help me be more professional in many ways.
In my immigrant experience, I have had many problems with finding the immigrant services. And I don’t like to do the research in Internet, because some of website do not help enough. Also I think languages communication is one of the big problems. Some times you don’t understand the websites.
UnLocal is a new organization of open service for all immigrants people, I think that UnLocal is important for us know about, because many immigrants need help but they don’t know where they can find it. UnLocal could be the place for people to contact and talks about their issues and problems. I think UnLocal is one of places to take pleasure in helping people, and to helps other as much as they can. I hope can help them as much as people need, which can be one big challenge for myself to work with UnLocal. Also UnLocal could be my first step to walk it out of the world.

Hello everyone. My name is Ariel Jaworowski. I am a recent immigrant from Poland. Around five years ago, along with my brother, I moved to Brooklyn, NY from Poland. Just like most immigrants, my family left their homeland in the quest of finding a better future in America. I think we have somewhat accomplished that heroic quest.

I am 18 years old now, so at age of 13 leaving all of my family and friends behind was a hard thing to do. Once I got to NYC, it was like I was born all over again. Just like a little baby I was learning new language, and getting used to all the new customs of the American society. I can fairly say it wasn’t easy at first, but I never gave up, and I encourage you all to never give up either because things will only get better with time.

    I am in 12th grade in high school, and I am soon to be heading out to college. I realized quite some time ago that in America, education is the key to success. That’s why I try to keep my grade on top. I also love playing soccer; I do it everyday. I am extremely proud of myself that I’ve been able to stay on top with my school work, and still have time to play my favorite sport.

            When I first learned about UnLocal, I wasn’t sure if it was going to work. However, I realized that it’s a great idea of getting people with common problems and common goals together through today’s technology, and if only people are serious about it, and put enough of their hearts into it, it will be a very successful organization. I am sure that every immigrant, if they’ve been here for 20 years, or for a week, will find some kind of helpful information through UnLocal.

            During the time of my internship at UnLocal, I hope to help as much as I can in all the aspects of this organization. Being an immigrant myself, I have a slight idea of how difficult it is to be in a new situation, and starting a life from scratch. That’s why I know I can contribute a lot to this organization.