LEWISTON — What started as an effort to help immigrant and English learner students graduate high school 15 years ago has turned into a nonprofit organization that has welcomed 200 refugees into the state and has provided many more immigrants with educational opportunities, among other services.

Maine Immigration Refugee Services has helped new Mainers navigate the challenges that come with living in a new country and culture. MEIRS was founded by five refugees: Director Rilwan Osman, Assistant Director Abdikadir Negeye, Director of Youth and Family Services Jama Mohamed, Sahal Jimale and Abdirisak Maalin.

When Negeye first arrived in Atlanta in 2006 he felt very isolated in a big city that was very different from the Kenyan refugee camp where he had lived much of his life, he said. The Somali native was looking for a place with a sense of community where he could settle.

He came to Lewiston, he said, after friends and family found that community. He managed to put himself through school and now holds a master’s degree.

“I felt welcomed, I felt the sense of community that everyone was talking about,” he said. “I saw, like, the city was very small for me to manage to get around.”

In 2008, while attending Central Maine Community College in Auburn, he and other founding members started a tutoring program for refugee children at Lewiston High School. At the time, no Somali children were graduating high school, he said. The language barrier was an obstacle for children.

The program played off of the students’ passion for soccer. They would spend time in the tutoring program and then get the opportunity to play soccer afterward, he said. The following year Somali students started graduating.

In the last few years, the graduation rate for multilingual learners at Lewiston High School has increased. For the 2021-22 and 2020-21 school years, 78% of multilingual learners graduated in four years, according to information on the Maine Department of Education website. That rate was 71% during the 2019-20 school year, 66% for 2018-19 and 58% for 2017-18.

Lewiston Schools Superintendent Jake Langlais, who started working for the district in 2012, has worked closely with the organization on many projects related to supporting English learner students and their families. The organization acts as a liaison for families and students struggling with aspects of school.

When new Mainer families move to town, MEIRS helps set up tours within the school so parents are not sending their kids off without knowing where they are going and what they are doing, Langlais said.

Community organizations, like MEIRS, are instrumental in helping English language learners and new Mainer children succeed in school, as well as helping to raise the graduation rate among students in those groups, he said.

Language barriers are not the only struggles new Mainer students face when moving to a new country, Langlais explained. Those students and their families have to learn the school’s structure, like changing classes at every school bell or navigating the school’s credit system. MEIRS helps people understand these systems and structures.

“They are excellent facilitators that help people navigate systems,” he said. “And I think without their presence, for certain things, it would be incredibly challenging for families to access schools, health care, you know, things that we sometimes take for granted because we grew up with it or are familiar with it because we know our systems and structures.”

Offering services to all new Mainers

Cofounder Jama Mohamed teaches MEIRS citizenship classes and has previously served on the School Committee and City Council in Lewiston. For most U.S. citizens, getting a passport is a mundane task, but to Mohamed it represents something he always wanted but never felt he had.

After fleeing his native country Somalia with his family and spending most of his childhood in a Kenyan refugee camp, he said attaining his citizenship meant he finally found a home.

“I was like crying the day that I became a U.S. citizen to be honest,” he said. “And then finally when I see my passport, I was like ‘wow, I made it.’”

In the beginning, MEIRS was called the Somali Bantu Youth Association of Maine. But as it expanded its services to help the parents and other immigrants, refugees and asylum seeker children with English and citizenship classes, it changed its name in 2015.

The citizenship process itself can be complicated, confusing and require a lot of education, and without an organization like MEIRS to assist, many would not know how to gain citizenship, Mohamed said. The program boasts a 100% passing rate among its members in their naturalization interviews, according to the organization’s website.

While many new Mainers attain citizenship themselves, it can extend to their families as well. Once they become a citizen, then their minor children also are naturalized.

Eventually the organization expanded its services to include case management for behavioral health, an important resource for people who experienced trauma where they came from.

In 2021, the Department of Health and Human Services approved allowing case management through the Whole Family Services program for people meeting certain income criteria. The goal is to help families set and achieve family stability goals. The program, and most of the organization’s services, are available to almost anyone who needs help — new or old Mainer alike.

Probably the biggest accomplishment for the organization was its refugee resettlement program, according to Lisa Day, director of community engagement. In 2021 it received 104 Afghan refugees after the Taliban took over Afghanistan.

Now it is one of only a handful of organizations in Maine, approved through the United Nations and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, that accepts refugees from anywhere in the world. While the organization does not have authority over which refugees are placed through the program, it helps whoever is sent to them.

These refugees come with employment credentials and Social Security cards so they can start working when they get to the U.S. But for asylum seekers, that is not the case. Asylum seekers must apply for those privileges after they arrive to the U.S., which is another service MEIRS provides.

An organization mostly led and operated by new Mainers

Many who once used the organization’s services now give back to it themselves in one way or another. Tetiana Cherednichenko came to Auburn last September as she fled the war in Ukraine. She had never traveled outside Ukraine before the Russian invasion, she said.

First she was in Italy, then she decided to come to the U.S., she said. It was difficult for her to move so far away from family still living in Ukraine but she knew there were better financial prospects for her in the U.S. and her family in Ukraine needed the monetary help at the time.

Though Cherednichenko was staying in an Auburn apartment, she and several other Ukrainian asylum seekers in her building had little knowledge about how to attain certain documentation that would allow them to work and receive benefits, she said.

Her sister-in-law, who came to town before her, helped her apply for benefits through the Department of Health and Human Services. But when she found MEIRS, it set her up with a phone and paid her first month’s phone bill. It also helped put her through driver education, allowing her to get a license, among other assistances.

Those smaller details of everyday life — obtaining a phone and transportation — are what many new Mainers need help with when they first arrive, she said. She was then able to relay information and resources she learned of to other Ukrainians in the area.

Now, she works as an interpreter and is a youth program team leader for the organization. In Kiev, she volunteered for a youth program that taught financial literacy to students, she said. She misses her life in Ukraine and that volunteer work, and does not know if she can ever return home.

Mohamed and Negeye both only made it to the U.S. through the support of their families, community leaders and many others along the way. Mohamed has found that it is easier for new Mainers to be helped by those who have gone through the experience themselves.

“We are the ones who came to this country from a refugee camp …. We have, like, the same feelings and the same process, exactly,” Mohamed said, explaining it can be easier to succeed with help from somebody who has taken a similar path. “So that’s where most of our passion came from.”

The organization will recognize and award those who have had a positive impact on new Mainers during its 15th anniversary gala Aug. 11 at the Royal Oak Room on Bates Street.

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