Leslie Yoder greets regular visitor Shawana Young, a Senior and People with Disabilities Program Home Care Worker. After reading about Multnomah County senior services now offered through the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization (IRCO) in the August Mid-county Memo, Yoder made a call that changed her life for the better. Yoder completes paperwork with Young’s help. [...]

A very complex mix What Amanda Lim brings as IRCO’s new board president By Ronault L.S. Catalani The Asian Reporter There’s an old Sulawesi saying about power: “Trust most those who have truly sorrowed.” As old school as it sounds, it’s still the wisest way to delegate power — ask any political science scholar. Indeed, this Old World prescription retains [...]

Approximately 60 refugees from countries including Nepal, Ethiopia, Myanmar (formerly Burma), Barundi and Cuba recently attended a workshop at the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization on public safety, basic laws and emergency services. In the countries where many of the attendees formerly lived, people in uniform were not seen as friends or advocates. In fact, many [...]

Portland took in close to 2,000 refugees yearly, until the U.S. State Department implemented lengthier background checks following the attacks. Now, about 1,200 refugees arrive in Portland each year. It may be less than the pre-9/11 peak, but that number still keeps Outer Northeast Portland’s Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization’s (IRCO) employees, most of them former [...]

Immigrant children, many from conflict-torn nations, see Santa for the first time By Nikole Hannah-Jones The Oregonian The children didn’t laugh or race about as they entered the winter wonderland with the sparkling white Christmas trees, dancing gingerbread men and enormous lollipops. They didn’t examine the mounds of brightly wrapped packages stuffed under the trees. Instead, the babes folded [...]

When Sokpak Bhell first arrived in the United States from Cambodia in the early ’80s, like many refugees she was relieved to be in this country, but adjusting wasn’t as easy as she expected. In Cambodia, where she moved from one refugee camp to another, older people who had visited the United States told her that [...]

The Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization will be starting new programs immediately in youth mentoring, health research and conflict resolution for newly arrived Africans, made possible by funding from new federal grants. Representing $1.4 million in funding over a three-year period, the projects have been funded by the U.S. Department of Education, the National Institutes [...]

At Immigrant community conference “The best revenge on a system that does not value you is to get an education. What a win-win!” Those words were spoken by Claudette La Vert, a special education teacher in the Reynolds School District, at the African Youth Leadership Conference Sept. 29 at the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization. Nearly 100 [...]

The Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization, elected new officers and appointed three new members to its board of directors. Assuming the helm as the board chair is Amanda Lim. Lim is Fiscal Analyst for the Oregon Department of Human Services Office of Family Health. Kristin Lensen, of Kristin Lensen Consulting, was named Vice President. Monica [...]

The general understanding of most people is that the Immigrant and Refugee Community Organization specializes in services targeted at people from other countries, and rightly so. However, as the organization has grown and expanded its services, it has offered more and more services to the local mainstream population. One example is IRCO’s services to seniors. In [...]