Creciendo Juntos – Growing Together

Health/Housing/Human Services Working Group

Friday, May 13, 2006 1-2:30 pm, United Way

Attended: Rhonda Miska/Incarnation (facilitator), Miriam Bender/Women’s Health Virginia, Janet Muse, Rebecca Schmidt/Planned Parenthood, Meg Camp/Cville Social Services, Sue Moffett/Cville Social Services

After introducing ourselves, we briefly discussed the current situation around immigration including the rumors of raids and white supremacist/anti-immigrant propaganda being distributed around the area. It was noted that President Bush will speak Monday, May 15 at 8 pm about immigration on network TV.

Rhonda announced a Dismantling Racism workshop that was scheduled for Saturday, May 13 at Incarnation and invited people to attend.

We got a bit sidetracked from the agenda and talked a bit about what DSS can provide for immigrants without documents. Meg Camp told us that undocumented individuals may apply on behalf of their citizen children or grandchildren living in their home. Emergency services with Medicaid are available for women who deliver a child and that child is automatically eligible for Medicaid for 1 year. TANF is also available for families with very low or no income, but the application would need to be on behalf of citizens.

Jon Nafziger had mentioned as an agenda item cultural literacy training. The group agreed it is a good idea either to offer our own or to try to plug into other training that is available. We should see what other programs exist in the area, for example, at UVa through peer educators, in terms of cultural literacy training.

The next agenda item was the Help Fair/Feria de Ayuda that is scheduled to be held at the Church of the Incarnation on Sunday, October 29 from 3 pm – 6 pm (after the Spanish Mass). We discussed who should be invited, and it was agreed priority should be given to groups who are able to serve undocumented immigrants and who have services available in Spanish. It was recommended we invite the new Children’s Community Dental Center on Hydraulic Road (contact Becky Weybright, 293-8100). Planned Parenthood will not be able to participate since the event will be held at a Catholic parish. Preparing for the fair will include sending out invitations, organizing donations of items for raffle, organizing donations of refreshments, promotion (flyers, Nuevas Raices, Zona Latina, announcements), physical set-up and take-down, and an emcee and people to oversee the event that day. It was recommended Rhonda contact Sharon Root and Nila Saliba about the help fair.

We then moved into more general discussion of what we want to work on as a working group. Sue proposed that we have some projects, and the group concurred. The working group will support the health fair in October, and we would also like to pursue cultural literacy training. Though we don’t feel it falls within our area, we would like to see a program or community conversation/education session on immigration, debunking the myths (eg that immigrants don’t pay taxes, that they drain the economy etc), explaining by flow chart the immigration process of gaining residency and citizenship, explaining the difference between a refugee and an immigrant. We thought perhaps quality community council might be interested in supporting such as event, since it would not be unlike the University of the Poor event they sponsored in January 2006. We would like to propose that the Education working group consider working to hold such an event.

Since many are traveling in June and much can be done by email, we scheduled our next working group meeting for July 13 from 1:30-3, either at the United Way or the Virginia National Bank Conference Room, depending on availability.