"I am responsible for employment orientation for refugees who have been politically persecuted or have been through a civil war. They touch you. You know what I mean? Some of our refugee clients actually saw their whole family killed, and some of them had to run and leave their family. I have heard some horror stories. It’s really bad right now in Somalia, and Burma… Libya, Sudan, a lot of the African countries. A lot of our clients come from refugee camps where if you step outside the camp you’re subject to being killed.
Once they enter the country we try to find them employment so they can become self-sufficient. I find out what they did in their country, and try to place them in a similar kind of employment, which is very hard because they don’t speak any English. So I enroll them in ESL [English as a Second Language] classes.
There aren’t too many organizations that do exactly what we do, as far as resettlement. Most of the other organizations have maybe four or five employment counselors. So that’s why I’m out there so much.
I really hit the pavement. I go everywhere. I go to Lackawanna, Cheektowaga, Amherst, Lancaster. I’ve been to Medina. I just go out there. There are very few jobs in the city, and English-speaking people have a better chance of getting them than refugees. I actually beg: 'These are my people. Please, please hire my people.'
I do pretty well. I get them entry level positions, like in a hotel or factory doing light assembly work or production. Once we place them most of them work very, very hard."
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