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Non-English speaking refugee and immigrant populations are getting information they need about the Covid-19 pandemic through a series of recently released videos.
The Vermont Multilingual Coronavirus Communication Task Force distributed more than 50 videos in the last several weeks. The videos have covered four topics, each in more than a dozen languages including Spanish, Swahili, Somali, Nepali and American Sign Language.
The task force meets twice a week over Zoom to discuss funding for their project and choose the video topics, according to Daimeyon Williams, the Multicultural Youth Program manager at Spectrum Youth & Family Services. The task force is a joint effort between groups including the Multicultural Youth Program, the Association of Africans Living in Vermont (AALV), U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants Vermont (USCRI), the University of Vermont Medical Center and CEDO in Burlington.
“It’s being done pretty grassroots because the interpreters do the recording on their own cellphones and then they email that back to us,” Williams said. “Then we upload that on a link that we’re then pushing out to all of our contacts.”
The first two videos provided up-to-date information about what Covid-19 is and how it is transmitted. The next video laid out information from the city of Burlington about social distancing measures. The fourth video discussed why people should wear face masks out in public and how to make them at home.
As of April 9, the videos had been viewed or downloaded more than 4,000 times. The videos are also compiled on a website along with translated flyers and fact sheets. Esther Doh, the health equity and refugee health coordinator with the Vermont Department of Health, noted the videos are a particularly important resource to reach those who can’t read.
Organizations that provide social services to Vermont’s refugee community are working hard to ensure their clients have the information and resources they need to stay safe and access benefits. In addition to the videos, this has meant reaching out to clients regularly over the phone.
Many of these organizations already have infrastructure in place to help resettled refugees make sense of a new bureaucratic and cultural landscape — anything from applying to jobs, communicating with landlords or writing checks. In recent weeks, this infrastructure has shifted in response to Covid-19. The biggest request recently has been for help filing unemployment claims, according to Amila Merdzanovic, the director of USCRI in Vermont.
“A lot of refugees and immigrants work in hospitality, whether it’s hotels or restaurants, or in environmental services or production, and those are some of the first places that laid people off,” Merdzanovic said. “Quite a number of people reached out to us and the AALV seeking assistance with applying for unemployment benefits.”
Like many others in lower income brackets, the economic impact of the pandemic is expected to hit the refugee and immigrant communities. Many hold low paying jobs and struggle financially, even in the best of times.
“Financially as someone coming here and starting new with very little English and maybe no transferable skills, people are accessing entry level jobs and the cost of living in Vermont is really high,” Merdzanovic said. “Savings is not something that people are able to build in the short term after arrival.”
A segment of the refugee and immigrant population work in jobs deemed essential, which Merdzanovic said presents an additional set of challenges, especially for those living in multigenerational households with at-risk elderly family members. Part of the motivation behind creating the multilingual video series was to help these essential workers protect themselves and their families by taking appropriate precautions such as regularly washing hands.
Another issue has been following the cultural burial rituals for the dead, which often require people to gather for practices that are no longer advisable, according to Thato Ratsebe, the assistant director of the AALV.
“We come from communal communities where we are always together when we mourn when we are happy, so this is a big shift,” Ratsebe said. “People are concerned about how they are going to practice their rituals when someone in the family dies.”
Ratsebe said the crisis can exacerbate the feelings of economic insecurity and isolation many refugees already experience day to day, and likely mirror conditions they have faced for a much longer period of time.
“One of the things we’ve been discussing in our case management meetings is the ability for us to anticipate that we are going to deal with a lot of mental health challenges,” she said. “People are definitely being retraumatized.”
Merdzanovic, who herself settled as a refugee in Vermont from Bosnia in 1995, said the current events can trigger anxieties from the past.
“It’s very real for a lot of people, myself included, who have lived through war and violence or have spent the majority of their lives in refugee camps,” she said. “This brings up a lot of anxiety and fear and uncertainty so mental health needs are certainly going to be something that we’re going to deal with for a long time after this passes.”
There are immediate concerns for the organizations, including helping children adjust to online schooling and making sure people can pay for food and housing.
“We collected donations of household goods and personal items from the community so we put together care packages and delivered them to all families that arrived in the last year,” Merdzanovic said. “Then we continue to stay in touch with some of our most vulnerable families.”
USCRI has also launched a neighbor relief fund to help support their clients’ urgent needs.
“This is not going to blow over quickly and people will continue to face challenges so through this fund our hope is to provide some temporary relief,” she said.
Ratsebe said that the biggest challenge for her clients, many of whom have lost their jobs, is paying their rent. She said that ideally there would be a funding source or other mechanism to help people maintain their housing.
She said we need to do “whatever we have to do to avoid homelessness within the refugee community, I think that will be the big first step. Once people have shelter and we can take care of the basics.”
Williams said having dedicated funding for the task force and their videos and other translations, that would allow staff to focus on making sure the refugee and immigrant communities’ needs are being addressed. Currently the task force has a small amount of funding pooled together from a variety of sources that they use to compensate their interpreters.
The organizations provide key support to many whose networks were left behind, Merdzanovic said.
“Refugees come here with no networks. One thing you cannot bring with you is your support networks,” she said. “That is a major difference between someone who is born and raised here. Other community members and family friends become those networks, those relationships develop, but it takes time.”
