On April 27th, Shaun Lopez, Yeshi Gusfield and 13 seniors loaded into a passenger van headed for Fresno, California. The trip, headed by Lopez, was a project to help Syrian refugees apply for green cards, a laborious and complicated process even for native English speakers. It was a part of the school’s Public Purpose Program for the senior spring seminar Modern U.S. History Seminar PPP: The U.S. and the Middle East. Lopez teaches the class with the aim of educating his students about a topic he feels many Americans are deeply ignorant about. He explains that while headlines about the Middle East plaster our newspapers, impact our daily lives and appear on our ballots, Americans generally know next to nothing about the place or its people, instead relying heavily on preconceived notions and media-spread stereotypes. Throughout the semester, Lopez has led his class through the complicated and often misunderstood past of the Middle East. Students have spent time examining Orientalism, gender policies, the Shia/Sunni divide and the brutal Syrian Civil War. He believes the class is particularly timely this year, given the proposed “Muslim ban” and the ongoing Syrian refugee crisis. “Ironically, we remain very uninformed about one of the most important places in the world in terms of American politics and are regularly asked to vote on issues we understand very little about,” says Lopez.
Lopez partnered with FIRM (Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministries), a group that aims to help with the resettlement process for new immigrants in the Fresno area. They currently serve over 6,500 immigrants in the area, mostly from Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe and Africa. Syrian refugees are their newest addition, ever since the influx in Middle Eastern immigration around a year and a half ago. Zach Darrah, FIRM’s Executive Director, describes FIRM as a “‘wrap-around’ service provider for the refugee community in Fresno. We categorize our services into health, education, outreach, advocacy, support services and community events. We operate several mental health programs, a community garden program, two different early childhood education programs, advocate for English Learner students in our school district and regularly host large community events. While we serve everyone and anyone, our main programs serve Southeast Asian, Ukrainian/Slavic, African and Syrian refugees.”
“The big goal of the trip is to help these Syrian refugees who have largely been left to fend for themselves with minimal governmental support,” Lopez summarized. He hoped to show FIRM’s refugee community that despite how it feels at times, there are people out there who care about them and value their presence. It is also personal for him, as he wants to give something back to the community of Fresno, where he was raised. He “hopes the trip will leave a lasting impression on his students, as they will get to see and interact with people who are struggling in ways we cannot possibly imagine.” He also intends to facilitate his students awareness of their own privileges, both individually and as a community. Lastly, he wants to help Lick students learn to be better listeners: “At Lick, there’s a tendency to want to go ‘do things’ to help people,” but often a lot more listening needs to be done before this hands-on work. Students who want to make positive change in the world need not only to understand an issue intellectually, but also engage with it on a more personal level and learn to listen to the people actually affected.
Originally, FIRM’s outreach coordinator and one of the members of the legal team didn’t want Lick students there and even advocated to cancel the trip, worrying that it would be a waste of time for all involved. However, at the close of the trip, with 70-80 applications filled out and his own work cut down by 2-4 months, he apologized to Lopez for his doubts and thanked the Lick group.
Next year, the plan is to form an independent study group for students to continue this work and partnership with FIRM. Lopez sees a main goal for the group as helping young Syrians feel as if they belong in Fresno and in America, through strengthening the relationships between Syrian teens and their American classmates. History teacher Yeshi Gusfield offers this advice to anyone aspiring to serve in a social justice realm: “I think one of the main things people forget to do is see what organizations are already out there doing work, so starting out with research the topic is important. There’s a lot of people doing cool work and they always need help in some way.”
When asked about the continuation of the Lick-FIRM partnership, both Mr. Lopez and Darrah hope that the proposed independent study will generate interest. Darrah enthused, “I would like to see FIRM and Lick continue together in partnerships around projects related to refugees and immigrants. We would be excited to host a group of students at FIRM on an annual basis and work to design projects around the current world climate or happenings locally in our region with refugees/immigrants. We deeply value relationships and partnerships; the deeper our relationship with Lick, the better!” Lopez matched his enthusiasm, remarking that it was great to see the “way we made a big difference in a tangible way.” One of Mr. Lopez’s favorite moments was watching Luca Cavan ‘20 fight through a particularly difficult situation. His family knew little to no English, and he wasn’t able to get a translator for a long time, leading to a frustrated family. Regardless, as the night ended, Cavan realized he hadn’t gotten as much done as other groups due to his unique challenges, “he asked to keep working. The commitment and the desire to help someone who was not initially that nice to him because he was frustrated was really impressive.” Gusfield agreed, adding how impressed she was with the students for their dedication: “No one complained even once, not about getting right off the bus and starting to work, sleeping on the floor, eating only bread and cheese, being in a crowded van. People just really wanted to help.”
Like Gusfield and Lopez, Darrah saw the trip as a huge success, summarizing, “We were able to meet a REAL need in our Syrian refugee program in completing Green Card applications. The process expanded last year and it is much more difficult to complete the process than it once was. Having trained, motivated and amazing Lick students at FIRM was helpful beyond words! We were incredibly impressed with the Lick students! They were incredibly skilled, flexible and worked within challenging conditions. The language barrier was certainly a challenge, but once the students got into the work, the barrier was diminished.”
