A very complex mix
What Amanda Lim brings as IRCO’s new board president
By Ronault L.S. Catalani

The Asian Reporter

There’s an old Sulawesi saying about power: “Trust most those who have truly sorrowed.”

As old school as it sounds, it’s still the wisest way to delegate power — ask any political science scholar. Indeed, this Old World prescription retains startling resonance for every modern day electorate picking its new president.

The proverb certainly applies well to Amanda Lim, the recently elected board president of IRCO (Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization), a Portland-based, nationally recognized and replicated resettlement agency. In its earlier identity and in its current form, IRCO has been assisting bewildered families, job-training ambitious newcomers, and serving energetic communities arriving from the former Soviet Union and its former East European satellites, from Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, and from the Muslim world, since 1976. Today IRCO does it all on an annual budget of about $9.8 million.

As strong as Ms. Lim feels about IRCO’s management record, she insists the agency would not have the model service delivery reputation it enjoys without the daily contribution of the organization’s extraordinary staff, drawn from those nationalities and ethnicities they serve. She also credits the ongoing support of IRCO’s constituent communities and compassionate funders. It’s all a very complex mix.

In her 8-to-5 professional life, Ms. Lim is a fiscal analyst for the State Office of Child and Family Health, a public health program of Oregon’s Department of Human Services. After work she has served as treasurer of the Seattle-based Cambodian Women’s Heath Organization, an educational effort for low-income, high-risk, pregnant women. Between breaths, Ms. Lim provides legal and medical translation for Khmer community members caught in circumstances more complex than families can handle on their own.

Understanding it plus living it. It is precisely this, as IRCO’s new board president puts it herself: a combination of her understanding an immigrant’s urgent needs plus her experience as an often-awed non-Western refugee, that has given her the insight and the empathy to contribute to IRCO leadership.

“When we first come to this country,” Ms. Lim says, “we all dream of a good future. Everything seems possible. But then there’s the unforeseen challenges — language problems, employment barriers, acceptance into our new society.” Then she adds with a smile, a mix of exhaustion and conviction, “you can only understand these things after you’ve struggled through them.

” According to IRCO’s new chairwoman, what fuelled her determination to succeed in America were her deceased parents’ words and deeds. Her father, Mr. Chiev Suor, president of the Cambodian-English College, was executed on orders of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime. The Cambodian Communist Party terrorized the country, nearly eliminating the entire educated population beginning in 1975 and lasting until the Socialist Republic of Viet Nam’s cross-border invasion in 1979. “Before he was killed, my father told my mother, ‘when Cambodia is back in peace, if I’m not alive, make sure my children leave the country, and make sure they all have a good education.’”

Madame Lim Kim Heak made it to America in 1981 with nothing but sorrow and three frightened children. “I am inspired by her,” Ms. Lim says, her eyes at once sad and fiercely focused, “a single mother in her late 30s with no transferable job skills, with just her will, her strong will to learn about American systems.”

Ms. Lim’s mother raised and college educated her daughter and two sons on wages she earned on an electronics assembly line. “She took my father’s words and made them a mission of her own.” Tears of love, of pride.

Twenty-seven years into America, Amanda Lim says she’s grateful to have an opportunity to be a part of IRCO. She calls the agency “a path that guides and supports immigrant and refugee families toward self-sufficiency.”

The first woman to serve as IRCO board president (in the organization’s 31-year history) is not a bit bashful talking about how proud she feels every time she meets newcomers who have struggled to become successful citizens. She is also proud about working with IRCO’s committed board and management. According to fellow board member Monica Smith, Ms. Lim “works in a positive, collaborative manner with all members of the board, and on behalf of all the communities served by IRCO. “She is a strong voice for all immigrants and refugees.”

Confirming the efficacy of the old proverb, Amanda Lim is that kind of strength grown from great sorrow. The kind you can truly trust.

Last Modified : April 16th, 2008 Filed under : News Navigate : Previous post /