Hogar Immigrant Services E-nunciations

As the end of the agency’s fiscal year approaches on June 30, I find myself once again compiling a list of the year’s accomplishments for Hogar and its small staff. As in years past, I am gratified and overwhelmed by the contributions we have made to the lives of immigrants across the Diocese. Thousands upon thousands have been served by literacy, ESL, computer, and citizenship prep courses. Hundreds served at the 12 naturalization workshops that have been held in places like Fredericksburg and Manassas and Sterling and Arlington. Scores of new American citizens proudly presenting their naturalization certificates. Hundreds of hungry families with food on the table. Dozens of evictions or heat/electricity cut-offs avoided. Parents reunited with children after years of separation. Backpacks, toys, warm clothes. Love. Lots and lots of love.

At the center of all of this is my tremendous team of 20 dedicated individuals who have given up so much—laying down their nets, so to speak, to “fish” at Hogar. I receive so many compliments on a weekly and monthly basis about their wonderful mix of professionalism and compassion. But every single one of them would say that we would not be able to do the work we do without the generosity of our 400+ volunteers and donors, plus the cooperation of our parishes and other community partners. So please permit me to thank you all one last time in Fiscal Year 2011 on behalf of everyone here at Hogar and, more importantly, on behalf of all those you have helped us serve this year. May God bless you all with fun and enjoyable July Fourth holidays so that you will be renewed and rested as we begin in earnest another fiscal year in which we “welcome the stranger”.

One sad final note: Danielle Tillilie will be leaving Hogar Immigrant Services after nearly two years with the agency. Danielle began as the manager of Hogar’s main site in Falls Church. When Amy White moved to her new assignment at St. Margaret’s, Danielle was promoted to Group Manager of the Education Services team. Under Danielle’s leadership, the team has: received $250,000 in federal and state grant funding, increased its classroom footprint at the main site in order to accommodate more than 300 students each day, enhanced its volunteer management and recognition program, and grown in size to eight employees (four permanent and four grant-funded positions). Danielle leaves us to go work for Virginia Tech. We wish her the best of luck in her new job and in her efforts to finish her Master’s degree!

Social Services Update

Catholic Charities WRO Office
Recognizes Our Youth in Loudoun County

The Western Regional Office is approaching its second year this September at the Cardinal Park Drive location in Leesburg, VA. In just these two years we have had to reconfigure our office and operational space to meet the growing demands of the community we serve. Last winter a parishioner from St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church of Purcellville, VA approached us regarding some service projects for their scouts. This worked out great for us since we were in need of some fine-tuning with our food pantry shelving and our conference room chairs.

A meeting convened in January after we identified which projects needed to be completed. Two cub scouts, Ross Fagerli and Tyler Dombrowski decided to sand and re-paint our four conference room chairs. They also purchased new cushions for our chairs with money they earned doing chores for local neighbors. They carefully removed all the hardware before they began painting to ensure it was done properly. They did an outstanding job on the chairs. Many thanks go out to these young boys who freely gave up their time and talents.

The second project was headed by Vincent & Peter Gugliotta, boy scouts working on the Laetare Award given by their church. Their project consisted of measuring and skillfully cutting particleboards for our shelving. Our shelving is made of tubular steel with open shelving that small items would often fall through the narrow openings. These young men worked diligently through their spring break with repeated visits to ensure a proper fit. We are very grateful for their top quality finished job.

We also receive a pleasant surprise from a young boy, Tommy Dean who turned ten this year. In lieu of birthday gifts he asked his friends to make donations to Catholic Charities, Western Regional Office. We are so appreciative of his generous spirit.

We want to thank all of these individuals who collectively made a difference at the WRO. It truly is an inspiration for us to work with these youths and see their enthusiasm firsthand. Thank you again from all of us at the WRO!

Volunteer Spotlight

Nancy and Joe Re have been a dedicated Hogar ESL teaching team since 2007 at the Falls Church site. We have their son Jason to thank for their volunteerism because he was once a Hogar volunteer teacher himself and inspired his parents to follow suit. Teaching definitely runs in the Re family since Nancy was an elementary school teacher for 20 years, Joe taught at the Naval Academy in Italy, and four of their six children are teachers. When Nancy retired, she missed teaching and decided to keep doing it on a volunteer basis.

This semester they are teaching an Intermediate 1 class on Wednesday evenings and they really enjoy teaching as a team although Joe will jokingly say :” I just do whatever Nancy tells me to do.” Not so, says Nancy: “Whenever I run out of things to say, Joe jumps right in. We work really well together.” Both of them say that they learn a lot from the diverse student population and find it exciting to meet and get to know people from other cultures.

They reside in Springfield but spend most of their time at their beach house in Ocean View, Delaware. Their children and 11 grandchildren live in the DC area and that keeps them here some of the time, but they would prefer to spend all of their time at the beach (and who can blame them?). Usually they will drive down to Springfield on a Tuesday, spend time with family and teach ESL on Wednesday and return to Ocean View on Thursday. That’s 147 miles one way! The couple helped initiate a small ESL program at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Bethany Beach, Delaware two years ago. The program uses the same Step Forward curriculum as Hogar and is providing the area’s immigrants with a much needed community service.

Hogar and its students are very fortunate to benefit from Nancy and Joe’s time and instruction, and we hope that they will continue to teach ESL for a long time to come.

Vignette

.This month we are pleased to feature Nawal Taha, a student in our Advanced ESL class during the week and our Citizenship class on Saturdays.
Nawal was born and raised in Sudan’s capital city of Khartoum, and worked mainly as a criminal and human rights attorney. While this certainly kept her busy, she saw her volunteer work on the side as her main motivation. Nawal and a team of 15 other lawyers from around the country formed a group providing educational and emergency materials such as medicines, food, water, and books to the many in need. While assisting communities throughout Sudan, the group’s work mainly focused on the impoverished region of Abyei, an area in the news often today as the site of territorial conflict between Sudan and soon-to-be independent South Sudan. In fact, when I asked Nawal about this region, she was quick to pull pictures of both Abyei and Khartoum from her bag. She was clearly unsettled by the stark contrast of Abyei’s poverty to Khartoum’s signs of wealth, paid for by the poorer regions oil.
Frustrated by the many obstacles to practicing law in Sudan, Nawal immigrated to the States in 1998 on a diversity visa. Since then, she and her family have settled happily into northern Virginia. She has four boys who she is very proud to speak of. Of her eldest two, one is a volunteer firefighter at the Fairfax Volunteer Fire Department and the other is a student at Northern Virginia Community College. Her youngest two are both Honor Roll students at JEB Stuart High School, earning all A’s and B’s.
Good work ethic and scholarship must run in the family, as Nawal is excelling in the ESL classroom. This semester, the advanced class is participating in an essay contest and Nawal is writing her essay about John Adams. She says she likes that he was also a lawyer and has enjoyed learning about him through the 2 books she has read as part of her research. She also enjoys studying the U.S. Constitution, a document she will need to be familiar with when she sits for her naturalization interview in just a few months. She would like start work on a Masters soon, so that she can continue the Human Rights work she started in Sudan.
We wish her the best as she pursues her citizenship and education and feel lucky to have met such a wonderful woman and family.

Teacher Tip

Encourage your students to keep up their practice over the summer!

As classes come to an end for the semester, many students moan about how they will forget their English over the summer. Indeed, many of our students at Hogar say that their English class is the only time they get the opportunity to speak English in their daily lives. So, our challenge as teachers is to encourage students to keep on learning and improving their English regardless of whether they have a formal English class to attend. The following are a few suggestions for how ESL students can maintain their English practice when they aren’t attending classes:

Write a journal in English. Encourage students to write something in English each day, even if it’s just a list of all the things they did that day.
Summarize TV programs and movies in English. After watching a program in English or any other language, the student should challenge themselves to summarize what they watched. They should just jot down a few quick notes explaining the meaning of what they saw, or privately speak out loud and act as if they were speaking to a friend about what they just saw.
Talk to yourself! It sounds silly, but many students, particularly mothers that stay at home, say they have no one to talk to or with whom they can practice English. I tell them they don’t need anyone else! While driving, doing other daily activities like taking a shower, washing the dishes, sweeping, or doing yard work, a student can use that alone time to speak in English practicing certain common conversations such as explaining where they are from, symptoms to a doctor, a movie they have recently seen all without need of another English speaker.
Find a conversation partner/circle. Through Hogar, a local place of worship, or any other means, students can find an English speaker who they agree to meet with in order to practice their English once or a few times a week. You can also encourage them to do this in a public place such as a library or café in order to maintain their own personal safety.


In This Issue: A Note From John Education Updates Legal Updates Social Services Updates Volunteer Spotlight May's Vignette Tip of the Month HOGAR STAFF John Odenwelder Director jodenwelder@ccda.net Lorraine LaVia Office Manager llavia@ccda.net Education Services: Lisa Ehm Waller Manager lwaller@ccda.net, x238 Allison Corbett Manager acorbett@ccda.net, x243 Hope Adair Manager hadair@ccda.net, x239 Brooke Hammond Pérez Manager bperez@ccda.net, x251 Danny Quinn Manager dquinn@ccda.net, x237 Bill Kelly Manager wkelly@ccda.net, x229 Krupskaya Elliot Manager kelliot@ccda.net, x252 Legal Services: Michelle Sardone Group Manager msardone@ccda.net Cindy Brown Paralegal cbrown@ccda.net Nancy Carbajal Receptionist ncarbajal@ccda.net Mike Elliot Paralegal melliot@ccda.net Christie Turner-Herbas Staff Attorney cturner@ccda.net Enrique Vargas Paralegal evargas@ccda.net Chelsy Weber Staff Attorney cweber@ccda.net Social Services: Dawn Dumas Manager ddumas@ccda.net (703) 443-2481 Angie Marchetto Intake Coordinator amarchetto@ccda.net (703) 443-2481 Hogar Immigrant Services 6201 Leesburg Pike Falls Church, VA 22044 T: (703) 534-9805 www.hogarimmigrantservices.org If you would like to have this newsletter sent to a different e-mail address or if you would like to unsubscribe from the mailing list, please e-mail acorbett@ccda.net.	A Note from John As the end of the agency’s fiscal year approaches on June 30, I find myself once again compiling a list of the year’s accomplishments for Hogar and its small staff. As in years past, I am gratified and overwhelmed by the contributions we have made to the lives of immigrants across the Diocese. Thousands upon thousands have been served by literacy, ESL, computer, and citizenship prep courses. Hundreds served at the 12 naturalization workshops that have been held in places like Fredericksburg and Manassas and Sterling and Arlington. Scores of new American citizens proudly presenting their naturalization certificates. Hundreds of hungry families with food on the table. Dozens of evictions or heat/electricity cut-offs avoided. Parents reunited with children after years of separation. Backpacks, toys, warm clothes. Love. Lots and lots of love. At the center of all of this is my tremendous team of 20 dedicated individuals who have given up so much—laying down their nets, so to speak, to “fish” at Hogar. I receive so many compliments on a weekly and monthly basis about their wonderful mix of professionalism and compassion. But every single one of them would say that we would not be able to do the work we do without the generosity of our 400+ volunteers and donors, plus the cooperation of our parishes and other community partners. So please permit me to thank you all one last time in Fiscal Year 2011 on behalf of everyone here at Hogar and, more importantly, on behalf of all those you have helped us serve this year. May God bless you all with fun and enjoyable July Fourth holidays so that you will be renewed and rested as we begin in earnest another fiscal year in which we “welcome the stranger”. One sad final note: Danielle Tillilie will be leaving Hogar Immigrant Services after nearly two years with the agency. Danielle began as the manager of Hogar’s main site in Falls Church. When Amy White moved to her new assignment at St. Margaret’s, Danielle was promoted to Group Manager of the Education Services team. Under Danielle’s leadership, the team has: received $250,000 in federal and state grant funding, increased its classroom footprint at the main site in order to accommodate more than 300 students each day, enhanced its volunteer management and recognition program, and grown in size to eight employees (four permanent and four grant-funded positions). Danielle leaves us to go work for Virginia Tech. We wish her the best of luck in her new job and in her efforts to finish her Master’s degree! Education Updates We offered a brand new Citizenship training on May 21st. It was created and taught by our Citizenship Managers, Krupskaya Elliott and Danny Quinn. The training covered the N-400 and some teaching tips and activities. If you missed it and are interested in attending, we will be holding another in the fall! Citizenship classes at Christ the Redeemer began Tuesday, May 31st and run until August 25th. Classes cost $40 and are Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 8-9:30pm. Spring classes at the Hogar office site, Holy Family, St. Joe’s and Christ the Redeemer (English classes) will be ending in June. Hogar’s First Volunteer Happy Hour We were so pleased to invite all of our volunteers out to Dogfish Head Alehouse for our first ever happy hour! It was wonderful to see everyone mixing and mingling and getting to know each other. We hope to do more of these in the future. Special thanks to Trader Joe’s, Chipotle, Applebee’s, Exxon Mobile, and our very own Lisa Ehm-Waller for donating the great prizes that we raffled off. Volunteers Needed! Hogar’s recruitment of volunteers to teach ESL or Citizenship classes is ongoing! If you are interested in volunteering, or know someone that is interested, please contact Lisa Ehm Waller at (703) 534-9805, x 238 or lwaller@ccda.net. . Legal Update Four members of the Legal Team—Michelle, Cindy, Chelsy and Christie—traveled to the annual Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC) Convening this month in Seattle, Washington. The three-day event brought together CLINIC affiliates (Hogar included) from all over the country for training sessions, networking, program management-building events, and a keynote address by current U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Alejandro Mayorkas. Besides being an excellent way to get the latest updates on complicated immigration laws (we each attended eight training sessions!) the Convening also gave us the opportunity to meet immigration caseworkers and attorneys from other Catholic Charities affiliates from all over the country. It was inspiring to find that we are all working together towards the common goal of reuniting families and providing justice to immigrants, and reassuring to learn that we all face similar challenges. And despite fears of rainy weather, we actually hit Seattle during a perfect stretch of three beautiful, sunny days! Social Services Update Catholic Charities WRO Office Recognizes Our Youth in Loudoun County The Western Regional Office is approaching its second year this September at the Cardinal Park Drive location in Leesburg, VA. In just these two years we have had to reconfigure our office and operational space to meet the growing demands of the community we serve. Last winter a parishioner from St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church of Purcellville, VA approached us regarding some service projects for their scouts. This worked out great for us since we were in need of some fine-tuning with our food pantry shelving and our conference room chairs. A meeting convened in January after we identified which projects needed to be completed. Two cub scouts, Ross Fagerli and Tyler Dombrowski decided to sand and re-paint our four conference room chairs. They also purchased new cushions for our chairs with money they earned doing chores for local neighbors. They carefully removed all the hardware before they began painting to ensure it was done properly. They did an outstanding job on the chairs. Many thanks go out to these young boys who freely gave up their time and talents. The second project was headed by Vincent & Peter Gugliotta, boy scouts working on the Laetare Award given by their church. Their project consisted of measuring and skillfully cutting particleboards for our shelving. Our shelving is made of tubular steel with open shelving that small items would often fall through the narrow openings. These young men worked diligently through their spring break with repeated visits to ensure a proper fit. We are very grateful for their top quality finished job. We also receive a pleasant surprise from a young boy, Tommy Dean who turned ten this year. In lieu of birthday gifts he asked his friends to make donations to Catholic Charities, Western Regional Office. We are so appreciative of his generous spirit. We want to thank all of these individuals who collectively made a difference at the WRO. It truly is an inspiration for us to work with these youths and see their enthusiasm firsthand. Thank you again from all of us at the WRO! Volunteer Spotlight Nancy and Joe Re have been a dedicated Hogar ESL teaching team since 2007 at the Falls Church site. We have their son Jason to thank for their volunteerism because he was once a Hogar volunteer teacher himself and inspired his parents to follow suit. Teaching definitely runs in the Re family since Nancy was an elementary school teacher for 20 years, Joe taught at the Naval Academy in Italy, and four of their six children are teachers. When Nancy retired, she missed teaching and decided to keep doing it on a volunteer basis. This semester they are teaching an Intermediate 1 class on Wednesday evenings and they really enjoy teaching as a team although Joe will jokingly say :” I just do whatever Nancy tells me to do.” Not so, says Nancy: “Whenever I run out of things to say, Joe jumps right in. We work really well together.” Both of them say that they learn a lot from the diverse student population and find it exciting to meet and get to know people from other cultures. They reside in Springfield but spend most of their time at their beach house in Ocean View, Delaware. Their children and 11 grandchildren live in the DC area and that keeps them here some of the time, but they would prefer to spend all of their time at the beach (and who can blame them?). Usually they will drive down to Springfield on a Tuesday, spend time with family and teach ESL on Wednesday and return to Ocean View on Thursday. That’s 147 miles one way! The couple helped initiate a small ESL program at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Bethany Beach, Delaware two years ago. The program uses the same Step Forward curriculum as Hogar and is providing the area’s immigrants with a much needed community service. Hogar and its students are very fortunate to benefit from Nancy and Joe’s time and instruction, and we hope that they will continue to teach ESL for a long time to come. Vignette .This month we are pleased to feature Nawal Taha, a student in our Advanced ESL class during the week and our Citizenship class on Saturdays. Nawal was born and raised in Sudan’s capital city of Khartoum, and worked mainly as a criminal and human rights attorney. While this certainly kept her busy, she saw her volunteer work on the side as her main motivation. Nawal and a team of 15 other lawyers from around the country formed a group providing educational and emergency materials such as medicines, food, water, and books to the many in need. While assisting communities throughout Sudan, the group’s work mainly focused on the impoverished region of Abyei, an area in the news often today as the site of territorial conflict between Sudan and soon-to-be independent South Sudan. In fact, when I asked Nawal about this region, she was quick to pull pictures of both Abyei and Khartoum from her bag. She was clearly unsettled by the stark contrast of Abyei’s poverty to Khartoum’s signs of wealth, paid for by the poorer regions oil. Frustrated by the many obstacles to practicing law in Sudan, Nawal immigrated to the States in 1998 on a diversity visa. Since then, she and her family have settled happily into northern Virginia. She has four boys who she is very proud to speak of. Of her eldest two, one is a volunteer firefighter at the Fairfax Volunteer Fire Department and the other is a student at Northern Virginia Community College. Her youngest two are both Honor Roll students at JEB Stuart High School, earning all A’s and B’s. Good work ethic and scholarship must run in the family, as Nawal is excelling in the ESL classroom. This semester, the advanced class is participating in an essay contest and Nawal is writing her essay about John Adams. She says she likes that he was also a lawyer and has enjoyed learning about him through the 2 books she has read as part of her research. She also enjoys studying the U.S. Constitution, a document she will need to be familiar with when she sits for her naturalization interview in just a few months. She would like start work on a Masters soon, so that she can continue the Human Rights work she started in Sudan. We wish her the best as she pursues her citizenship and education and feel lucky to have met such a wonderful woman and family. . Teacher Tip Encourage your students to keep up their practice over the summer! As classes come to an end for the semester, many students moan about how they will forget their English over the summer. Indeed, many of our students at Hogar say that their English class is the only time they get the opportunity to speak English in their daily lives. So, our challenge as teachers is to encourage students to keep on learning and improving their English regardless of whether they have a formal English class to attend. The following are a few suggestions for how ESL students can maintain their English practice when they aren’t attending classes: Write a journal in English. Encourage students to write something in English each day, even if it’s just a list of all the things they did that day. Summarize TV programs and movies in English. After watching a program in English or any other language, the student should challenge themselves to summarize what they watched. They should just jot down a few quick notes explaining the meaning of what they saw, or privately speak out loud and act as if they were speaking to a friend about what they just saw. Talk to yourself! It sounds silly, but many students, particularly mothers that stay at home, say they have no one to talk to or with whom they can practice English. I tell them they don’t need anyone else! While driving, doing other daily activities like taking a shower, washing the dishes, sweeping, or doing yard work, a student can use that alone time to speak in English practicing certain common conversations such as explaining where they are from, symptoms to a doctor, a movie they have recently seen all without need of another English speaker. Find a conversation partner/circle. Through Hogar, a local place of worship, or any other means, students can find an English speaker who they agree to meet with in order to practice their English once or a few times a week. You can also encourage them to do this in a public place such as a library or café in order to maintain their own personal safety.