Immigrants entering the United States from a less developed country often have a difficult time adjusting to their new environs. This is especially true for young people, and perhaps even more arduous for those coming to North America from Africa.
According to Jamal Dar, co-founder and executive director of the African Youth and Community Organization (AYCO), many of the AYCO kids from Africa grew up in refugee camps and didn't have the opportunity to go to school or to play sports. "They didn't have any opportun[ities] at all, except to worry about what they were going to eat tonight and tomorrow," Dar explains.
Dar knows of what he speaks. As a child, he and his family escaped the brutal civil war raging in Somalia, moving first to Kenya, before emigrating to the U.S. in 1996. Dar had it much easier than most, moving through the education system in California and then moving to Portland to attend PCC and Portland State University (he's now an employee at Nike). But within his community of fellow African refugees living in Portland, he saw firsthand how children were struggling.
Kids are being enrolled in school based on their age, Dar says, "not based [on] what they know." A 15-year-old could be placed in high school, although he never attended school and never learned his ABCs or 123s. "What are they going to do in high school?" Dar wonders. The frustration starts there, he says. "They drop out of school, they are out on the street doing a lot of bad behavior—sexual behavior, drugs, so [much] stuff."
To help combat this, Dar helped form the African Youth and Community Organization in March 2010. The all-volunteer nonprofit works with immigrant and refugee children in the greater Portland area, providing homework help and tutoring, as well as organizing intramural basketball and soccer teams.
The setup for the program is impressively simple. If a young person wants to play sports on one of AYCO's teams, they have to agree to tutoring and after-school homework assistance. And as part of that, they have to aid younger students with their studies. College students work with high schoolers that work with middle school students and so on.
How have kids been taking to this idea? From a base of 30 students when they first started a year and a half ago, the AYCO now has 125 members, including a number of children who aren't even African.
The original 30 were from Ghana, Sudan, Kenya, and Somalia, says Dar. These were the most vulnerable kids that really needed help at the time, but now white, African-American, Spanish, and Asian kids are part of AYCO.
Right now, the AYCO is focusing its efforts on schools in the outskirts of the city, where many refugee families have been able to find affordable housing. Through its first full school year, the organization has been working with Markham Elementary, Wilson Middle School, and Jackson High School. This coming September, AYCO will begin working in David Douglas High School, where Dar estimates there are over 300 students from Africa in attendance.
The goal, Dar says, is to add a new school every year, but that they "have to sustain first. The need is there. We don't want it spread out so that we can't function and help at all."
What's especially impressive is how much the AYCO has managed to do with little money. Dar estimates that they've brought in around $3,000 in donations since the nonprofit was founded, surviving solely on a diet of volunteer help and donations of equipment from Nike and other organizations in the area.
And while AYCO wouldn't turn down any money from any outside sources, what the organization needs more of, says Dar, are people willing to donate their time as tutors or to aid with getting the word out about the program.
"Without money or with money,” says Dar, “we are still going to continue on, to deliver what we can so we can help serve our community."
This comment has been removed. Comments are moderated and generally will be posted, unless they are spammy or abusive. For more information, please see our Comment Guidelines.