On the corner of Burt Street and South State Street resides a building where a ceiling is decorated with crisscrossed strings of flags from around the world. Blackboards, bookshelves, posters and handprints adorn the walls. Every Sunday at 3 p.m., girls in colorful hijabs and skirts walk through the door with a sign that reads “RISE.”

Refugee and Immigrant Self-Empowerment, a local nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting self-sufficiency for members of the refugee and immigrant communities in Onondaga County, established the Women’s Empowerment Initiative in 2013. Among the employment and education services that RISE provides, the Women’s Empowerment Initiative focuses specifically on two disenfranchised groups: women and youth.

The program serves girls from middle school to young adulthood. Many of the girls come from a Muslim background and find that the difference in customs and sex and gender roles create challenges when they come to America.

“Here, this is their space and kind of their community center, and they can ask any kind of questions,” said Associate Executive Director Isabelle Kallman, who oversees all programs at RISE.

She meets with the girls every Sunday for two and a half hours. The group explores different empowerment themes each month through curriculums, interactive activities, art projects and guest speakers.

Once a month, community volunteer Julie Daniel practices hour-long yoga with the group, translating different poses into larger concepts for the month. She’ll teach downward dog and plank for lessons on strength, balancing poses for focus and snake or cobra pose to communicate the idea of flexibility in mind and body.

For a class on leadership, Kallman may split the girls into teams where one person in each group wears a blindfold and guides everyone from point A to point B. The game encourages them to work together while delegating one person to lead.

Student volunteers from Syracuse University once brought in mirrors for the group to learn about self-esteem. Everyone drew a self-portrait in a positive light before going around and sharing what they liked most about themselves.

Every activity has a theme and a goal, Kallman said, but it’s never rigid. The curriculum is constantly evolving to provide a comfortable space for the girls to learn the new culture.

These hands-on interactions also help the girls forge and strengthen their bond with one another. It’s a community that crosses identity lines, where they come together all as women, and not as individuals belonging to this group or that group, said Erica Kokoszka, a recent SU alumna who now serves as education director at RISE.

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With many of the women at RISE from a Muslim background, that first visual of a hijab can create prejudices and biased assumptions, in which case they’re “othered” immediately from just their appearance, Kokoszka said.

All the girls enrolled in the program are in school, and the Sunday afternoons they spend together are a time when they can talk about shared unique experiences or obstacles. “They have all kinds of challenges, and getting that support within their community can be really effective,” Kallman said.

Kallman has also recently begun working on activities that can incorporate the mothers, as well. As their children become more fluent and culturally assimilated in school, the parents, who don’t speak English as well, can begin to feel disconnected.

“Every teenager goes through that (rebellion phase) anyway,” Kallman said. “And then, if on top of that, you could speak more English than your parents, or you knew more about things here just from going to school or being more out in the community, you sort of have this leg up.”

Kallman added that the kids’ assimilation can create a divide with their parents, who don’t have the luxury of going back to school and need to work to sustain the family.

RISE recently held its annual year-end fundraiser on #GivingTuesday. The donations would help fund programs like Women’s Empowerment Project that support field trips, transportation, snacks and supplies, and the upcoming Annual Women’s Empowerment Conference in February, a one-day forum in partnership with local organizations to bring workshops and guest speakers to girls.

The Women’s Empowerment Initiative has invited guest speakers in the past from institutions such as SUNY Upstate Medical University, SU and Vera House.

“They feel pressured sometimes that they’re supposed to step outside their cultural box and become this leader in the community,” Kallman said. “Not that they shouldn’t want to do that, but you shouldn’t feel pressured.”

This fall, some of the girls experienced apple picking or visiting pumpkin patches for the first time. They did sun salutations on yoga mats and drew mandalas. Through every activity, the girls gained confidence to be their own person.

“Anytime that I can help them gain self-esteem and leadership skills in the community is a win, and we do see that,” Kallman said.

Published on November 28, 2018 at 12:15 am

Contact Jiaman: jpeng04@syr.edu