Children clamor around the silver, bulbous machine that generates low-level electric charges. As their hair stands on end and little aluminum pie plates fly off their hands, they say, over and over again, “It’s magic!”

Like the Wizard of Oz, Anna Rudnitskaya, a pixieish 16-year-old with a red OMSI polo shirt, stands at the on-off switch of the machine in the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry’s demonstration room. In a soothing voice tinged with a Ukrainian accent, she explains the science behind the “magic” Van de Graaff generator.

“Electricity is going through you and trying to get out” through hair or fingertips, she says.

For Rudnitskaya, who wants to study medicine in college, volunteering at the museum is a dream job. She is part of OMSI’s Rising Stars youth volunteer program. She is also part of a new push by the program to collaborate with groups such as the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization to recruit minority and immigrant students.

“We’d like this volunteer program to help OMSI reach out to underserved populations,” said Kyrie Thompson, the youth volunteer coordinator. She started approaching organizations that serve diverse populations when she started the job a year ago. It’s an investment into the museum’s future in a changing region, she said.

“If someone knows a young person from their community or who speaks their language is here, they will be more likely to visit.”

From IRCO’s perspective, the OMSI program is a perfect tie-in to its grant-funded Young Women’s Equity Program, which aims to steer Slavic and African girls to careers in science and technology.

In Russia and Ukraine, gender equity in science careers and education is not drastically different from gender equity in the United States, said Margarita Vejo, an academic career counselor at IRCO who works with Slavic youths. However, Oregon’s immigrant population is largely composed of evangelical Christian refugees who, because of their traditional values, may steer girls away from high-intensity careers.

“We hope girls will become more curious about science and might be inspired to take deeper science courses,” Vejo said. “This is a chance to put theory into practice and to meet people and be more outgoing.”

This summer, four of about 70 Rising Star volunteers are students from IRCO’s Young Women’s Equity Program. Two are from Ukraine (including Rudnitskaya), and the other two are from Ethiopia and Somalia.

For a lot of minority youths, “there are all these barriers” to joining the Rising Stars program, Thompson said. “A lot of families don’t even know about OMSI. Some don’t have transportation or aren’t familiar with the application process or can’t cover the cost of the program.”

Thompson said the partnership is symbiotic because IRCO provides their volunteers with job-skills training before starting at OMSI and the museum offers scholarships to cover the $250 cost of joining the volunteer program. That cost covers their training, an overnight stay in the museum, a family membership to the museum and extras such as the uniform shirt and food.

To underscore the importance of multicultural, multilingual volunteers, Thompson cites a recent example: Once, a student volunteer from a Korean immigrant family encountered a school group that was visiting from South Korea. She performed a science demonstration entirely in Korean.

“They were totally excited and amazed,” Thompson said.

Rudnitskaya, who grew up in Eastern Ukraine and came to Portland with her family when she was 10, said she had been to OMSI only once before she became a volunteer.

“I really like it,” she said. “I never even thought you could volunteer in a prestigious place like this.”

Between IRCO and OMSI, she said, having so many people invested in her future career makes her feel as if a career in medicine could be in her reach. Now she’s also considering physics because her time in OMSI’s physics lab has piqued her interest.

“I’m thinking about more fields, rather than just being a secretary or something,” she said. “To work here at an age like this encourages me in the future.”

ANGIE CHUANG
The Oregonian Staff

Angie Chuang: 503-221-8219; angiechuang@news.oregonian.com

Asian gangs focus less on violence, more on lucrative crime
Monday, July 09, 2007
ANGIE CHUANG
The Oregonian Staff

Asian gangs have faded from Portland’s spotlight since the 1990s, when beatings and shootings routinely highlighted violent rivalries of a generation whose refugee parents were scarred by war.

Now run by a younger crop of savvier youths, the underground organizations are stronger than ever, gang-prevention experts at the Asian Family Center say — less violent, smarter, more high-tech but just as destructive to young people.

Ly Duong, 18, knows this firsthand. He’s seen the friends and acquaintances who suddenly got respect, invitations to parties and money — lots of money — when they joined.

But he’s seen the dark side, his peers ruined by drug addiction, with multiple arrest warrants and no future. So the Franklin High School senior has made up his mind.

“They watch ‘Godfather’ and ‘Scarface’ and think they’re going to get rich or die trying,” Duong says. “Get a job, man.”

Duong has become a spokesman of sorts for the Asian Family Center’s youth programs, particularly its gang-prevention efforts. He understands the local gang scene but is also a gang-prevention success story.

Colleen Kim, who heads the center’s Youth Gang Prevention Services Program, says Duong is unusual because he sought out and embraced help. She recalls that he approached her a couple of years ago and said, “Hey, keep me out. Check in on me.”

For him and the approximately 100 other youths each year who get case managers through the program, the goal is to forge a relationship with someone who is neither a parent nor a gang recruiter. Kim says they get young men and women involved in sports, tutoring, jobs, community activities — whatever it takes.

“It’s something to use their time and energy,” she says. “And to gain their trust.”

The Asian Family Center, run by the Northeast Portland-based Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, has offered programs for gang-involved youth since the 1980s. Back then, officials of the immigrant community organization say, the problem was highly visible.

A wave of disaffected youth who had been out of place in schools — alienated by post-Vietnam hostility, and a system unprepared for the large numbers of refugees who came in the late 1970s — formed gangs for a sense of belonging and protection. Often, Vietnamese American children had fathers who were in re-education camps or were killed during the war.

As that generation passed through the school system, many dropping out, ending up incarcerated or even killed, the Asian gang problem seemed to fade. High-profile beatings, fights and shootings became less frequent.

Lt. Mike Leeloff of the Portland Police Bureau says the gang enforcement team has focused its limited resources on growing Latino and African American gang activities over time.

“Asian gangs were more street-level and showing their colors throughout the ’90s,” he says. “They’re there now; they’ve become a nonfocused group.”

But Kim says subsequent generations of gang members just changed tactics.

Better adjusted to U.S. culture than their predecessors, these youths, mostly Southeast Asian, organized to form crime rings. They used technology to stay low-profile, making money from identity theft and dealing marijuana or ecstasy. Some gang members have gotten involved in underage human sex trafficking and larger-scale drug deals, she says.

“You don’t necessarily see a high percentage of API (Asian Pacific Islander) kids in the prison system, and street crime appears to have gone down,” Kim says.

“But I think gangs have gotten progressively worse. The networks have become more sophisticated, more difficult to detect.”

Leeloff says the gang team focuses on what he calls “street-corner livability” crimes such as shootings, robbery and assaults. It’s difficult to quantify with police statistics what Asian Family Center staff members have observed.

However, he agrees that it’s a mistake to view Asian gangs as a problem of the past. “They are still around. You just don’t hear about them.”

“In it for the money”

In Duong’s eyes, the shift is simple. In the past, Asian American youths didn’t fit in at school, got beat up and wanted to feel protected. Now, “a lot of these gang members are actually really popular at school. They’re in it for the money.”

County and city grants pay for 21/2 staff positions at the Asian Family Center; the prevention program is in the second of a three-year cycle. It focuses on at-risk youth with no criminal records. A separate program helps gang-affected youth who are in the court system, Kim says. She acknowledges the programs can’t reach hardened gang members or compete with the sway of gangs: “We can’t coerce anyone.” But young people such as Duong are their best outreach tools, and the center has a respected reputation in the community after more than two decades of anti-gang work.

Duong says he stuck with the program because of the staff.

“They are the realest people in the world,” he says. “You can tell them anything. They have also experienced the things that we’re going through. They’ve been through rough times themselves.”

Angie Chuang: 503-221-8219; angiechuang@news.oregonian.com

African community leaders credit Asian leadership for success of Africa House

By Maileen Hamto

More than 100 people gathered at the opening ceremony of a refugee service center for Africans who are newcomers to Portland.
The realization of a longtime dream of community leaders and volunteers, Africa House Refugee Center is the latest accomplishment of the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO).

In recent years, the African population in the Portland metro area has grown considerably. More than 20,000 Africans from 25 different countries now make Portland their home.
Africa House is a multilingual community-based center that provides African refugees family-focused access to services, such as job training, health education, referral for social and support services, family intervention and leadership workshops, community engagement, and more.

Asian community leaders were among those celebrating the grand opening of Africa House. Organizers say Africa House follows the same model that has worked well for IRCO’s Asian Family Center, established in 1989 to serve refugees from Southeast Asian countries. The first family center of its kind in Multnomah County, the Asian Family Center was specifically designed to meet the unique cultural and language needs of Asian Pacific Islander youth and families.

“I find the Asian community as part of my family, because of the similar struggles we have,” said Karifa Koroma, chairman of Africa House’s 16-person advisory board. As a college student in the 1970s, he moved from Sierra Leone to Oregon, and has since been a strong advocate for the African immigrant community. “(Southeast) Asians and Africans have the refugee issue in common. Now that we’re in a new country, we’re trying to help each other.”

IRCO Executive Director Sokhom Tauch, who came to this country as a refugee from Cambodia in 1975, is pleased with the opportunity to work alongside leaders of the African community to share lessons learned from the struggles of the early immigrants from Southeast Asia. “Being united is the best thing to be in this country.”

The diversity of the African refugee and immigrant community posed some early challenges in pulling together a cohesive community effort. In time, community leaders put their differences aside to work toward a common goal: to build a community service center that serves the diverse needs of African refugees and families.

Koroma was successful in ensuring that the advisory board represented diverse leadership from various African communities. “It took us a long time to get here, but the journey was worth it. Now, Africans are able to come together as a strong community — under one roof — speaking with one voice,” he said.

Funded by a three-year $200,000 grant from the federal Office of Refugee Settlement, Africa House seeks to provide culturally specific services to African refugee families.

The center has a team of trained multilingual staff and volunteers who are dedicated to helping individuals and families become successful and self-sufficient, says Djimet Dogo, program coordinator, originally from Chad.

“It’s our responsibility to help refugees integrate into American culture, to their new life in the United States. We help with everything from life skills and employment training, to referrals to medical services,” said Dogo. “We help new refugees go to the DMV or register their kids to school. If there’s a problem at school, we mediate and help parents understand how the school system works.”

Currently in the Montavilla neighborhood, Africa House is in a leased facility owned by a former Iraqi refugee, Wally Matthew. “It was hard for us to find a place,” said Dogo, who is grateful for Matthew’s generosity. Matthew reportedly rents the facility to IRCO for less than market value.

Contributing to the success of the community center is one good turn for Duke Tran, IRCO board president, who emigrated from Vietnam with his family in the 1990s. He is credited by the African leadership for being one of the driving forces behind the establishment of Africa House.

“It’s a great accomplishment for the African community. It was wonderful to work with people who really wanted to make this happen. Now, our city has a one-stop resource center for African refugees and immigrants,” he said.

Africa House Refugee Center is located at 8535 S.E. Stark Street in Portland. To learn more, call (503) 802-0082 or visit www.irco.org.

Where EAST meets the Northwest

RACHAEL WILSON
FOR THE MID-COUNTY MEMO

Shefali Kanal performs the Indian classical dance, “Bharat Natyam” at the Legin restaurant last month during Asian Cultural Night.

At the Asian Cultural Night held last month, young dancers from the Cambodian American Community of Oregon performed the traditional Cambodian dance, “Flower of the World.”

Mid-county’s Immigrant and Refugees Community Organization annually hosts Asian Cultural Night. Here, the Au Co Dance Group performs a traditional Vietnamese Umbrella Dance called “Mua Hoa Anh Dao.”

Dancers from the Nattasin Lao of Oregon Dance Team pose for a picture.

On Friday, May 11 at Legin Chinese restaurant, (located at Southeast 82nd Avenue and Division Street, by Portland Community College’s Southeast Center) hundreds of people gathered, packing a large conference room, to join in celebration of Asian culture. The occasion, “Asian Cultural Night: A Celebration Across Culture and Time,” is an annual event hosted by the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization’s Asian Family Center.

This year, which marks the AFC’s 12th anniversary of operation; Asian Cultural Night featured a five-course meal from Legin, a variety of traditional Asian dances, a raffle, and keynote speaker, Sho Dozono, Chief Executive Officer of Azumano Travel.

According to IRCO’s Executive Director Sokhom Tauch, IRCO “has been sponsoring this annual event in May to celebrate AFC’s successes, honor Asian Heritage Month, and [to] increase the visibility of the Asian and Pacific Islander community.”

May, which has been recognized within the United States as Asian Heritage Month since a Congressional Resolution in 1978, is today celebrated by millions of people nationally and internationally. Within Portland, IRCO’s Asian Cultural Night is just one of many events occurring in May in celebration of Asian culture and heritage; judging by the turnout, this event was a definite success.

The night’s entertainment consisted principally of dances hailing from various Asian Cultures. Grammar-school-aged girls commenced the festivities with a performance of “Flower of the World,” a traditional Cambodian dance. This act was followed by a traditional Vietnamese Umbrella Dance, a Filipino cultural prosperity dance for the harvest season, a three-man modern street dance, or “break dancing” exposition, and a traditional Hmong dance.

The diversion was interrupted just long enough for guests to enjoy the bok choy and mushrooms, broccoli and beef, sautéed green beans, and the Kung Pao chicken; but, then came a classical Indian dance depicting scenes from Indian folklore, and finally, “Kinnaly,” a traditional Lao dance.

The night also featured a display of Korean drumming by Osanori, a volunteer group of fourteen to twenty-year-old Korean Americans practicing and preserving their culture’s musical heritage.

Between the dancing, eating, and music, keynote speaker, Sho Dozono, recounted the story of his life and told of his immigration to the United States from Japan in the 1930s. He talked about Japanese Internment during World War II and how it related to racial profiling of the Muslim and Middle Eastern community in a post-9/11 atmosphere. He also spoke about being a minority in the United States, concluding with the sentiment that “in the community of the human race, there are no minorities.”

Other speakers, such as County Commissioner Jeff Cogen, and IRCO’s Family Services Director Lee Po Cha, related Asian Cultural Night to some broader issues of diversity and equality, as well. They congratulated Mayor Tom Potter for being the first Portland Mayor to march in uniform in a Gay Rights Parade, and they celebrated Governor Kulongoski recent signing of HB 2 and SB 2, which granted greater legal equality for gays and lesbians in Oregon.

Proceeds from the Asian Cultural Night went to support the Asian Family Center’s youth programs, which include youth gang violence prevention, the Schools Uniting Neighborhoods program, tutoring and academic assistance, and anti-poverty services.

The Oregonian
Saturday, April 21, 2007
by SCOTT LEARN

When Wanning Su’s family moved from southeastern China to a tiny east Portland apartment in 2004, she was 12 years old, barely spoke English and confused about how to get to school.

"I was a little bit scared," she says. "I didn’t know the language. I didn’t know what the teacher was saying."

Wanning’s experience has not been unusual in East Portland. The area, peppered with relatively low-cost infill apartments and a growing array of social service agencies, is Oregon’s most diverse destination for refugees and immigrants, including newcomers from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Russia and the former Soviet republics.

That United Nations mix is reflected in the area’s schools. It also shows at the East Portland headquarters of the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, where staff members speak roughly 40 languages and executive director Sokhom Tauch predicts the immigrant influx will continue.

"Immigrants like to cluster among themselves," said Tauch, who came to the United States as a Cambodian refugee in the mid-1970s and earned his MBA from Marylhurst College (now University) 16 years later. "This is the only place that still has some available land, and the housing is better than on the west side."

Portland has become more immigrant friendly since he arrived, Tauch said, both in acceptance and services. The immigrant organization he directs offers help from infancy to old age, including job training, translation, parenting help and school-based instruction, among other services. In 2006, it served about 7,000 clients.

Services and schools attuned to immigrant needs are helping draw immigrants and "second migration" ethnic families from elsewhere in the United States, Tauch said. Wanning’s family came for better jobs and opportunity — her dad works in construction and her mom at a restaurant — and because an aunt and uncle were here.

Wanning, an eighth-grader at Binnsmead Middle School, gets as much as three hours of English tutoring after school and participates in a girls’ leadership class.

The 14-year-old is making the tough adjustment to U.S. life better than most immigrant kids, said May Donohue, an academic support specialist for the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization. "She’s very diligent and willing to learn."

But some things were strange, Wanning said. Her classmates’ various skin colors and hair styles were a bit of a shock. So was the American teenage diet (she doesn’t like pizza or hamburgers). And so was the relatively sedate pace of American life compared to its thrill-a-minute image in China.

Her advice to other immigrant kids: "Don’t be scared" and "school is fun."

Scott Learn: 503-294-7657; scottlearn@news.oregonian.com.

PORTLAND – Spring break is usually a time for students to relax, sleep in, watch television, play video games and hang out with friends. Seven Binnsmead Middle School boys, however, decided to spend their vacation participating in a three-day, service-learning project which had them waking up early to restore a nearby creek.

“It’s a lot of hard work,” said Ricardo Delgado, a 7th grade ASPIRE student, while he shoveled out blackberry root balls.

“You have to get the root out so it won’t grow again,” added Xin Yi Huang, also a 7th grader and ASPIRE student. When asked what he has learned so far, Huang said, “The native plants are good and invasive plants are bad for the habitat.”

The students are part of two youth programs–ASPIRE and SST– provided by the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO), a nonprofit organization. The After School Program for Immigrant and Refugee Education (ASPIRE) is an academic and social support program for Latino, Asian Pacific Islander and Slavic students in three, southeast Portland Public Schools, including Binnsmead. The Successful School Transition (SST) program provides academic support and high-school preparedness for 8th graders at Binnsmead Middle School.

“I want the students to take ownership over their community,” said Oscar Arana, ASPIRE’s instructor. “I’ve noticed it can be easy for them to take their neighborhood for granted and throw garbage wherever. So I thought it would be good for them to help improve their surroundings.”

While picking up garbage, pulling out invasive species and planting native plants, the students would joke with each other, competing to see who could pull out the longest root and even strategize about upcoming soccer games–the boys are also part of a soccer team organized by the ASPIRE and SST programs.

“This is a good bonding experience for them,” said Maria Kimbro, a support specialist for ASPIRE and SST. “Plus, they are having a good time working outdoors, especially in the nice weather.”

Andrew Nguyen, an 8th grade SST student, learned that “the roots of trees can prevent erosion. The roots trap the soil so it does not wash away when it rains.”

“I thought this was going to be lame,” said Jerson Mejia, an 8th grade SST student, “but it was kind of fun in the end."

The Employment and Vocational Education (EVE) program of the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) is accepting enrollments for its free, 12-week Office Clerk Training and Health Care Worker Training courses. EVE also offers Pre-Employment Training. The courses are open to any Multnomah, Washington, or Clackamas county resident of Asian descent who possesses strong English skills.

The courses provide an overview of entry-level heath-care and clerical jobs, as well as the skills many such jobs require. Training primarily focuses on computer, reception and job application skills. Participants also get internship experience in a medical or other office setting, selected according to their skills and interests.

Office Clerk Training runs from March 26 through June 13, with classes Monday through Wednesday from 4:30 to 8:8:00pm. The Health Care Worker Training begins July 2 and meets Monday through Wednesday from 4:30 to 8:00pm through September 19. Both courses include a dinner break.

The free Pre-Employment Training is offered on an open-enrolllment basis, with three evening classes offered each week. Participants learn computer skills and job application skills, including filling out job application, composing cover letters and resumes, and interviewing for jobs. They also receive assistance in looking for jobs based on their skills and experience.

IRCO is located at 10301 N.E. Glisan Street in Portland. To learn more, or go enroll in a class, call (503) 234-1541 and ask for Pre-Employment Services.

Trib Town: Tourney marks job well done by kids in immigrant program

By Jennifer Anderson 

When Svetlana Baronetchi arrived in Portland with her son last spring from Moldova – the poorest nation in Europe – neither of them spoke English.

Yet her 14-year-old son, Oleg, an eighth-grader at Binnsmead Middle School in Southeast Portland, now speaks and understands enough to communicate with his teacher and classmates.

“He’s doing fine with every subject, and he likes to talk to his peers in class,” Baronetchi said through a translator. “He can ask questions if he doesn’t understand.”

A big part of Oleg’s success has been the ASPIRE program (the acronym stands for After-School Program for Immigrant and Refugee Education), run by the Southeast Portland-based Immigrant Refugee Community Organization.

Funded by a Portland Children’s Investment Fund grant of $500,000 per year, the program offers tutoring in English and other subjects as well as a host of after-school activities to get kids involved in their community.

Today, the ASPIRE students will get a small reward for a successful start to the school year: a soccer tournament at the new indoor soccer complex in Southeast Portland.

“We’re doing it so they’ll continue to be engaged,” said Lyn Tan, the program’s lead coordinator. “Even though it’s a soccer tournament, we want the youths to understand that there’s a competitive aspect but they also have to work together as a team.”

The ASPIRE program serves 80 students in grades four through eight at Binnsmead, Lent Elementary and Marysville Elementary, two other Southeast schools with diverse populations.

The kids at Binnsmead and Lent will participate in the tournament; the Marysville students will sit this one out but likely will participate in the next one, Tan said.

The soccer tournament also will be open to the Schools Uniting Neighborhoods program at Binnsmead and Lent, and a program at Binnsmead that helps eighth-graders make the transition to high school. The game is set for today at Portland Futsal, which opened three months ago at 3401 S.E. 17th Ave.

The owner of the complex, Paul Lomanto, said he waived the $600 it would have cost the group to rent the building for two hours.

He said he did so because youth soccer clubs are expensive for kids, considering the cost of traveling to tournaments, league fees and equipment.

“There’s a lot of kids who can’t afford it,” Lomanto said. “During the holiday season I want to give something back.”

Lomanto said much of his customer base is international, since soccer is celebrated across the world.

“Being here every night, I hear almost every language imaginable,” he said. “I almost wanted to put a flag up where people could put a pin in where they’re from. It feels like at least 100 different nationalities.”

Whether it’s kids or adults, Lomanto said, soccer seems to bring people together. “The beautiful thing is that soccer is almost like a language,” he said, “the same all over the world.”

A PSU student is now the program director at a new organization aiming to help refugees

Eva Fitzsimons

Over 1,500 refugees come to Oregon each year, and the culture shock and the challenges of navigating government paperwork, public schools and health care can often make the transition difficult.

African refugees may have a new place to turn to for help - Portland State student Djimet Dogo. He is the program director of the newly created Africa House, an organization intended to assist African refugees upon their arrival in Portland.

"This is a long-time dream of the African community," he said. "Everything will depend on how supportive the community is." That community includes PSU students who Dogo hopes will help by donating volunteer hours.

"It’s a new world for them and it’s easy for them to get lost here," Karifa Koroma, chairman of the African Community Association in Portland, said about refugees. Dogo and Koroma said that there are about 18,000 to 20,000 African immigrants and refugees in the Portland metropolitan area, nd Africa House plans to help 120 families a year.

Since many of the people who come to Oregon do not speak English, the transition can be a difficult one. Africa House hopes to help newcomers adjust.

"There is quite a bit of misunderstanding," Koroma said. Both Dogo and Koroma mentioned that many things acceptable in Africa are unacceptable and even illegal here. People must be informed of this so they can stay out of trouble.

It is more than just a helping hand for new arrivals, though. It will also serve as a place to teach youth about community leadership. And there, children can learn about their culture and their language.
"You need to make sure for the culture to still exist," Koroma said.
Africa House was created with a grant given this year by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Though the grant only pays for three years and only pays for assistance to refugee families, Dogo hopes that the program will continue after that time is up and that services can be expanded to immigrants as well.

Since the center opened on Oct. 1, Dogo has been busy networking. He has been reaching out to different African communities in Portland. The Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, and the African Community Center of Oregon will also assist in operations of the house.

Dogo already had a bachelor of arts from a school in Chad. Now he is working on a bachelor of science in communications studies. He has been attending PSU for about three years, and is nearing the completion of his degree.

"It’s good, it’s a very good place to study," he said. Before coming here, he also attended the European University Center for Peace Studies in Austria.

In the 1990s, many regimes in Africa collapsed due to conflict between diverse ethnic and religious factions. Dogo went to places like Croatia, Slovenia and Hungary and studied how countries in similar situations reconcile.

"There is no peace at all," he said of Africa. The irony is that many of the places, like Chad, the Sudan and the Congo, are rich in natural resources, yet people have to leave their country because of dictators and persecution.

"There will be peace only when the people make decisions, " he said.

He described a "circle of violence" between different ethnic groups that will end only with democracy. "We have to educate the people to make decisions."

Dogo came to Portland in 1999 seeking asylum, and now lives here with his wife and three children. He said he likes it here and has no plans to leave. After he gets his bachelor’s, he says he wants to get a master’s in public administration.

For now, Africa House is a full-time job. Twenty-eight of the 54 African countries are represented. Though each of the countries can contain a multitude of different cultures, Africa House will look past that.

"We still have a lot of similarities," Dogo said.

Refugees - Some splinter groups aiding migrants feel slighted and criticize IRCO’s leadership and actions

ANGIE CHUANG

Djimet Dogo, who will lead the Portland area’s first service center specifically for African refugees, has heard it all before.

A lot of people say Africans can’t get along," he said. "You put two of us in one room, and we will fight."

In the past six years, agencies and individuals have tried to organize this multinational, multilingual community, which has led to power struggles, mutinies and splinter groups — some with nearly the same names.

Dogo, a native of Chad, rattles off an alphabet soup of acronyms — ACCO One, ACCO Two and ARINO — each of which has sought to be recognized as the representative of Africans in the state: the African Community Center of Oregon, the African Community Coalition of Oregon and the African Refugee and Immigrant Network of Oregon.

On Wednesday, as the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization officially opened Africa House, the community — which includes the diasporas of dozens of countries, many of which have been torn by civil war and genocide — is at a turning point.

Dogo and IRCO representatives say it’s a pivotal opportunity for one of Oregon’s fastest-growing refugee populations to come together at last. At least 15,000 African refugees are in the state, according to federal and community estimates.

But community leaders who have split from IRCO say the state’s largest nonprofit service provider for refugees hasn’t done enough to reach out and to honor their desire to have an independent African organization. Ultimately, they say, an agency originally founded by and for Southeast Asian refugees cannot truly meet the needs of Africans.

"We are not enemies. We just have different philosophies," said Basko Kante, a Ghanaian immigrant and board president of the African Community Coalition of Oregon, a group that broke from IRCO about a year ago. "Some of us have a yearning that Africans must organize themselves, not be an arm of a larger institution."

United is the strongest way

It’s no accident that the organizers of Africa House have consulted with Asian American community leaders, many of whom were active when Oregon’s first major refugee population arrived after the wars in Southeast Asia.

There is a trajectory, experts say, that refugee and immigrant populations travel to learn how to organize around a new identity. The idea of a unified "African," "Asian" or "Slavic" community is foreign to populations that encompass a range of national, ethnic and religious identities — as well as groups that have been at war. As many African refugees note, no one was just "African" in Somalia, Eritrea or Togo.

Thirty years ago, IRCO executive director Sokhom Tauch recalled, a panoply of migrants from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, as well as minority ethnic groups such as Hmong and Mien, fought bitterly about how to best serve their communities.

Referring to the founding of the Asian Family Center about a decade ago, Tauch, a Cambodian native, said, "It took us 20 years to be able to forget the past and work together. I want to show the African community that united is the strongest way we have."

IRCO was founded more than a quarter-century ago, as a merger of the Indochinese Cultural and Service Center and the Southeast Asian Refugee Federation. It has replicated its model for self-sufficiency training for successive refugee groups — from the former Soviet Union, the Balkans, the Middle East and Africa.

Therein lies one of the main sticking points within the African community. In 2000, IRCO started the African Refugee and Immigrant Network of Oregon, or ARINO. A year later, members of the network severed ties with IRCO, saying the organization was run by Asian Americans who gave a disproportionate share of resources and time to Asian groups.

By 2003, both groups said they were working to open the region’s first African community center, or Africa House. They competed for a Multnomah County Health Services contract to provide mental health counseling to Africans; IRCO got it.

IRCO formed the African Community Coalition of Oregon to replace ARINO. Last spring, another splinter group, led by Kante, broke from IRCO. Kante registered the nonprofit as the African Community Coalition of Oregon, forcing IRCO to change its group’s name to the African Community Center of Oregon to keep the acronym familiar to its clients.

IRCO’s group "was not representative of Africans," Kante said. "It had employees of IRCO and was selected by IRCO.
"In order to be a true African organization, you must have people who were selected by each country’s associations at the table."

Some feel slighted

After a couple of unsuccessful tries, Tauch and IRCO learned this summer that they had received a $200,000-a-year grant for three years from the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement to establish the Africa House. The grant would pay for a project coordinator and two staff members, as well as money to lease and operate a site.
The only problem? They couldn’t get an African to apply for the job of leading the Africa House.

"One African woman did, but she withdrew her application," Dogo said. He was working for IRCO at the time but did not apply. "It’s a very tough job."

Dogo said he decided to apply at the last minute, after fellow African refugees convinced him he was the right person to bring the fractious community together.

He was educated in peace studies and conflict resolution in France and Austria and trained in Russia, Slovenia, Hungary and South Africa to learn how those nations overcame their divides. He thought he could handle the African community in Portland.
Dogo said he has reached out to every African group he can think of to make clear he wants to work with all of them. He has organized a series of meetings to gather input.

Karifa Koroma, board president of IRCO’s advisory group, African Community Center of Oregon, said he has made clear that the Africa House will help, not compete with, other organizations.

"It’s not about you versus me or them," said Koroma, an immigrant from Sierra Leone. "It’s about the community we want to help."

But even in these efforts toward unity, Kante’s group and ARINO’s board president both said they felt somewhat slighted. Kante said he will not actively participate in Africa House unless he feels that IRCO is approaching his group, the African Community Coalition of Oregon, as an equal partner.

"We will go to any meeting and listen to what they have to say," Kante said. "But we are not going to be on some advisory group just so we can advise you and you can decide not to take our advice."
Kpetike-Kokouda Ketevi, a native of Togo and Kante’s fellow board member, said their group plays a unique role in the community, taking cell-phone calls at all hours to help Africans one on one with everything from registering a child in school to accompanying someone to court.

"IRCO can’t do things on that level," Ketevi said. "We do things the way people did in Africa. You find the individual who can stand by your side."

Rolia Manyongai-Jones, board co-president of the African Women’s Coalition, said nearly everyone in the community shares the goal of a united, independent Africa House. But she thinks some leaders’ desire to break free of IRCO is premature.

"A baby has to crawl before it walks," the Liberian native said. "And IRCO is the place that baby will crawl until it walks."

Now, Dogo has practical concerns to deal with, such as finding Africa House a permanent home, preferably in North or Northeast Portland. For now, it’s in IRCO’s Employment Skills Training Center on Northeast 102nd Avenue.

He hopes someday soon, the Africa House will prove perceptions of his community wrong.

"If you are a real community leader, someone who is really working for the welfare of the community, then people can come together around that. People can get along."

Angie Chuang:503-221-8219; angiechuang@news.oregonian.com.