Blog

Below is a draft proposal that I will be sending to Maria Kenney to move forward with a new phase of involvement at the UC Shelters.  During a recent discussion I had suggested the possibility of working with the staff and incorporating them directly into my research and project.   After having visited all the UC shelters and having spent time there making images as well as meeting staff through my wife’s work at the ICC in Roger’s Park, it stood […]

I’ve posted some image galleries in the menu dropdown “proofing” section of my website that were for Maria Kenney, Thomas Perry and James LoBianco to review.  I’m going to leave the images there so that they can view the images but I can keep the blog more private at the moment. If you would like to view those images the password is HeartlandColumbia2020. I think I’m going to move them into the blog as well shortly but in the meantime ya’ll […]

Last week I met with two former refugees who had gone through Nancy Callahan’s hospitality training program and still work in the hospitality industry. One gentleman was from Afghanistan/Pakistan and the other from Myanmar (Rohingya). I met with them both together which turned out to be a bit of a mistake. I initially wanted to hear about their experiences navigating US and international immigration bureaucracies, paperwork, challenges they faced navigating this system and if they did it themselves or relied […]

Bureaucracy as a weapon: how the Trump administration is slowing asylum cases The main part of this article gets to some of the things that have been largely on my mind with this fellowship.  Paperwork and bureaucracy are naturally an impediment to all kinds of immigration journeys but as the article is pointing that this administration is intentionally making things harder in the hopes it can slow down the process for people or make them give up because they can’t […]

This is an in progress list… some sections still need to be filled out further. Heartland Centers for Unaccompanied Minors (Should be up to date) 10/08/19 Phone meeting with David Sinski (Executive Director of Heartland Human Care Services) We discussed my involvement as the current fellow, my past work and some of the things I was interested in learning about at Heartland regarding the centers for unaccompanied minors. Conversation went well and I was then referred to James LoBianco. It […]

Ok so since my last blog post I had a lull in actual meetings.  The emails haven’t stopped but there was almost a full week where I didn’t have any in person meetings with anyone.  I figured out that this is all going to be about filling up the calendar in advance with people to meet, scheduling secondary and tertiary visits to make sure I don’t have too many blanks in the calendar.  To setup all this stuff takes time […]

Met with Nancy Callahan at the Ravenswood location.  She’s really wonderful.  We did a little walk through of the facility which was very interesting.  A couple of the things that stood out as very interesting was seeing all of the household items stockpiled there for new refugees.  As I understand it the UNHCR has a specific list of what items a new refugee is supposed to receive upon resettlement.  A list like one bed, one table, two chairs etc. and […]

Met a lot of people today… I’m so bad with names when I first meet people so I’m asking for name cards from everyone which seems to be helping. Met Joseph Dutra and we immediately started talking about an instagram takeover at minimum and we are going to circle around in a couple weeks when the dust settles to see if we can come up with some other ideas for how I might engage with Heartland’s Social Media outlets during […]