Urban in Alaska: Cultivating community

Refugees first became a part of Rebecca Volino Robinson's life when she was a girl growing up in Minnesota, a state that, 20 years ago, began taking in large numbers of Hmong, Somali, Vietnamese and other oppressed and traumatized people who had been forced to flee their faraway homes.

She loved experiencing different cultures through the people she met, and, later, immersed herself in Anchorage's community of resettled refugees while earning her three UAA degrees: a bachelor's in psychology, master's in clinical psychology and Ph.D. in clinical-community psychology.

"Now that I've worked with this population long enough, I've got the gift of being able to see some people go through the resettlement arc, as we call it," said Robinson, a 2014 Selkregg Award winner who reaches out to Anchorage's refugees through research and her pro-bono clinical psychology practice. "When people are resettling, things go really well for a little while-'I'm safe, I'm secure, I'm here in the U.S., I've arrived.' Then all of a sudden, it's like, 'My mailbox is full of bills and I don't understand anything and no one understands me.' You kind of see a plummet. That's when I tend to interact with people."

Discovering fresh ways to engage

Robinson will help present one of the breakout sessions planned for Friday's Urban in Alaska conference, a free, open-to-the-public event at UAA that focuses on innovative ways faculty members, students, community organizations and individuals are reaching out to enhance their communities.

A 9 a.m. keynote welcome by Mara Kimmel-First Lady of the Municipality of Anchorage and Hickel Professor of Strategic Entrepreneurship at APU-will take place at UAA's Lucy Cuddy Hall before participants disperse to take part in breakout sessions at neighboring Rasmuson Hall:

• Angela Liston, who teaches civic engagement and learning classes at UAA, UAA student Whitney Lowell and Dave Barney of Mountain View Boys & Girls Club will give an overview of the UAA Introduction to Civic Engagement class and discuss what it means to be civic-minded.
• Kimberly Pace, a UAA assistant professor of political science, will talk about the Model United Nations and how students can study various forms of government, cultures and traditions, get a chance to practice diplomacy and develop critical thinking and public-speaking skills.
• Donna Aguiniga and Pam Bowers of the UAA School of Social Work, along with UAA students William Boyles and Devin Johnson, will discuss creating community partnerships and projects with Covenant House and Identity Inc.
• Caroline Wilson of WWAMI and Emily Rom, a community-engaged student assistant, will talk about their experiences with the UAA Brain Bee, a high school competition organized and run by UAA biological science students in partnership with the Anchorage Museum.
• Patrick Cunningham of the UAA School of Social Work, and others talk about Java Music Club, a project SSW students coordinate in partnership with the Anchorage Pioneer Home. Their goal? Reaching out to people who feel lonely and isolated in their long-term-care community.

Finding gaps, highlighting what's right

At Urban in Alaska, Robinson will discuss the results of her Selkregg Award-funded refugee needs assessment, which used interviews and photography to map community resources and identify unmet needs-especially unmet mental-health needs-among refugees who have made their homes in Anchorage.

"It's kind of a snapshot of different programming that is supporting the health and well-being of refugees in very different kinds of ways in Anchorage, in innovative kinds of ways," Robinson said. "We wanted not only to identify the problems in the refugee community, the gaps and the needs, but identify the things that are going right and the resources that are in place that we could actually build capacity around."

Robinson's presentation will involve Hari Kafle, a Bhutanese refugee who now works for Refugee Assistance & Immigration Services; Jeni Rogers, who coordinates the peer language navigation program of Alaska Literacy Program; and Alanna de la Pena-Bradshaw, a UAA student who is completing a practicum with Providence Family Medicine Center and co-facilitating a Hmong support group.

"We talk about mental health needs and resilience of refugees and the immediate thought is, well, we need mental health services from the Western perspective, but it's really not what we're learning from people," Robinson said.

A community gardening project Kafle coordinates earned high praise from refugees.

"Really what's needed, from the refugee perspective, is opportunities to have enriched lives, have opportunities to connect with the community," Robinson said.

The gardening project, she says, does that in a variety of ways.

"They have the opportunity to use an agricultural skillset they already have in place," Robinson said. "It's so important for people to do something they're competent at. So they get to do the gardening and teach others about gardening, while practicing English and bringing their vegetables to the market and selling them, figuring out how the money system here works and also becoming visible in the community and making relationships."

Robinson says it's critical to bolster the mental health system, because many refugees came from places where they experienced extreme adversity and unspeakable trauma.

"It is our responsibility to make sure refugees have the same access to mental health care that anybody else has in our community," she said.

To begin with, Robinson would like to see universal mental health screenings and a resource network where refugees can be referred for specialty treatment of anxiety and trauma disorders.

"We need to make sure there are opportunities for people to dig in the dirt and grow vegetables and teach our community something new," she said. "It will help us grow, too. It's not just about refugees changing. It's about us changing and adapting and becoming a more diverse, accepting community."

What happens after the plummet Robinson so often sees in refugees she meets?

"If you stick with people long enough, often what you see is people start just naturally coming out of that arc," she said. "[They realize] it isn't going to be supereasy here, but I'm getting the hang of this. I can do this. I hear that in people's voices, in children's stories. Slowly, if they work through it, they'll get to that place where they're saying, 'I'm here now; I want to be here.'"

Written by Tracy Kalytiak, UAA Office of University Advancement