Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees

The Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees strives to promote the well-being of culturally diverse individuals and families within the community by welcoming refugees and immigrants and by providing individual and community-centered activities designed to create opportunity and facilitate understanding. They offer a combination of programs and services, including refugee resettlement, health services and referrals, interpretation, translation, ESL education and technical assistance.

This summer, Mark Castiglia, '09, is working with Compass, the rebranding of MVRCR's cultural services. He is conducting web-based research on cultural competency curriculum and developing training materials. He will also assist with the Refugee Running Team, which will participate in the Utica Boilermaker, and the International Mile section of the race.

In 2007, Jeremy Fisher, '10, worked with the organization to host the Utica Boilermaker's International Mile race. This event is an exciting opportunity for the center to highlight the many different cultures and traditions in our community to the 10,000 runners who participate in the race, and the 30,000 spectators. He also prepared a photo catalog of some of the stories of the center's clients who now call Utica home. The catalog will be added to the center's website and used for promotional purposes, and will become a basis for introducing the local community to the immigrant community. The project will help the center to identify successful Iraqi resettlement stories in order to prepare the community for the possibility of resettling Iraqis to Utica in the near future.

In her second summer as a student fellow for the Upstate Institute, Alicia Gleason, ’08, worked with the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees in 2006. Alicia researched refugee access to health care, which is often adversely affected by the language barrier between refugees and health care providers. With MVRCR Executive Director Peter Vogelaar, she conducted a literature review, developed a long term research plan, designed image based surveys that could be used with refugees unable to read, researched grants, began grant writing for further funding and held individual pilot interviews with refugees and physicians. Gleason said,

"The MVRCR’s goal is to research those cultural differences and develop a cultural training for both refugees and health care providers to target, discuss and reconcile the issues. The research has both state and national implications for doctors and refugees alike and is projected to continue for the next five years.  I plan to return to the MVRCR during the spring semester to continue working on the project."