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.

My name is Alejandro Ariza and I’m 18. I’m currently attending to a school call International High School @ Prospect Heights (HIS@PH) in Brooklyn. I’ve been living for four years in this neighborhood and I can tell is a great place to live and improve our English skills. I personally don’t like my name because it sound so weird and also because most of my friends who don’t speak Spanish always pronounce it wrong; that why I prefer people to call me Alex. I’m from Mexico but a lot of people get confused because my color skin and the way I speak. I came to United States when I was about 15 years old; since then I never have gone back to my country. Like most of Mexican living in this country I’m an immigrant with aims to accomplish. My family and I used to be peasants in my country. Something that I love about me is that Spanish is not my first language like most. Mexicans did

My great-grandparents had roots of Zapotec culture, but for some reason my grandparents and parents have lost those roots. When I was a child I had born with Zapotec roots, my parents didn’t believe that I couldn’t speak Spanish like all my brothers. At the age of six years old my mother took me into the city, Puebla, which was when I started to forget my first language and Spanish came. But I have done many things in this life, but things that having to deal with math had made my live harder.

As an immigrant, UnLocal is a great opportunity to help myself and my family. On the other hand, it it will be a way to interact with people of my same nationality and others as well. Now I’m involved with this organization doing my internship, which will give me the opportunity to participate to find what the needs of my community are.

Finally I would like to see a real case where someone will be helped or will find an answer to a concern he or she had through UnLocal.