WORT 89.9FM Madison

Serving The Whole Person With Dignity And Respect

Madison’s Catholic Multicultural Center has a long history of helping those in need in our community. It offers assistance with basic needs like food and personal essentials and helps new residents with finding jobs and housing, with learning English and finding services they need and with job training and finding their places in the community. Steve Maurice, CMC Director and Becca Schwartz, Associate Director came into the WORT studio to talk with Gil Halsted about what the CMC does and how people in need can access services as well as how community members can volunteer to provide help. Learn more about the CMC here: www.cmcmadison.org Photo courtesy of CMC Madison

Broadcast on:: 23 Sep 2024
Audio Format:: other

Welcome to the World View Feature for September 22nd, 2024. I'm Gil Halstead, and I'm your host. Today, we welcome the Director and Associate Director of the Catholic Multicultural Center of Madison, Steve Morris, and Becca Schwartz. The center welcomes and supports people from all backgrounds by meeting their immediate needs, providing opportunities for education, integration into the community and professional growth, and offering community-based activities that honor and respect the many cultures of those that now call Madison their home. The center's mission is to serve people in need, and it's been doing that for a long time. The center recognizes the detrimental impact of systematic injustice on those who are marginalized by it, and recognizes that systemic injustices have existed since the founding of the United States. Their mission is to do their part to rectify these injustices so that clients can thrive, feel welcome here, feel safe, and have opportunities beyond needing help with basic needs. Basically, a summary of the mission statement you can find on the CMC webpage. So with that, I hope accurate summary of what the CMC does. I now want to welcome Steve and Becca to World View. Welcome. - Thank you very much. We appreciate it. Thank you. - I want to start by asking you to highlight what you believe now are the most important activities that the center is involved in right now, whether there's a hierarchy or you pick them out. - Sure, so we have a number of programs, sort of basic needs and then education. So the kind of philosophy of the center is to provide for folks so that they get their basic needs met, and then they're able to work towards self-sufficiency and improvement in their lives. So we have a free meal program and a food pantry, which provides obviously food for families. And the food pantry really has become extremely busy in the last two years since COVID, especially. And really what it is, is as much a need for food as it is a need for housing, because of the cost of housing in Madison and the surrounding area that people are utilizing food pantries to be able to save money to pay their rent. So we have seen an over 100% increase in the number of people coming to our food pantry, so that is definitely a huge need right now. - And the pantry is open and available with times of day and how regularly does it go? - Sure, our pantry is open on Tuesday afternoons from 1.30 to 3.30 and Thursday mornings from 10.30 to noon. - And you are located on the south side of Madison, right off of Park Street there. And how long has it been there? I read a little bit about the history and I didn't start by asking you that, but the Multicultural Center has been going for a long time. - It has, the organization has a long history and in that neighborhood too, in different iterations over the years. So it started out as Blessed Martin House and then Saint Martin House at that location since the early 1950s. And then our Lady of Guadalupe, the Central Guadalupe Center was started in the mid-70s to assist Spanish-speaking community, especially. Obviously we're affiliated with Catholic Church and so a big part of that was providing sacraments and providing religious education to the Spanish-speaking community when the parishes in the area didn't have any Spanish-speaking priests or staff. And then the current building replaced the old Saint Martin House building and that was in 2002 and that's where the name Catholic Multicultural Center came in. - So for more than 20 years, that's basically what? - Yeah, and then so the programs of those two agencies, Central Guadalupe and Saint Martin House kind of combined and became the Catholic Multicultural Center. And so yeah, besides the basic needs of the food programs, then we do a lot in education and employment. And we've been serving, obviously the Spanish-speaking community for a very long time, but serving the immigrant community as a whole is really what our focus has been for the last 20 years. So English classes, employment assistance, immigration legal services are programs that we provide for the community. - And do you do job training as well or more job reference or is it actual? - Yeah, no, we do have a job training program. Actually, we have a second location in Fitchburg and we do a food service job training program where we actually prepare school lunches for a number of the Catholic schools in the area. I often use that as a training ground for folks. - And where do most of your clients come from who are coming to the food pantry or to these other programs that you're operating? - Really from all over the world, we see obviously the Spanish-speaking community has been the primary immigrant community we've served for many years, but now we're seeing people from all over the world. So last year, our immigration programs serve people from 75 different countries. - Really? - And our, I think Becca Caprelli answer better, some of the countries that are being represented in our food pantry right now. - Aside from, like Steve said, the, some of the Spanish-speaking countries we're seeing an increase of people from West Africa. Last year, we started carrying halal meat and our food pantry for our Muslim guests and so we're seeing an increase in that because I think that we're among the only food pantries that provide that. So. - Yeah. How do you interact with other organizations that are serving the same population, the immigrant population that you must like network? So maybe some examples about how that works. - Yes, I mean, we partner with a number of organizations. In fact, again, I'll let Becca talk about a program that is gonna be held next week that is very much a partnership, a number of agencies. - So coming up next weekend is our immigrant town hall and it is, we're partnering with a number of organizations like Steve mentioned that we're partnering with the League of Women Voters, the Dane County Office of Immigrant Affairs, Open Doors for Refugees, Literacy Network and JSS. This is the third year that we're doing it and the idea of the event is that we invite elected officials to attend along with our immigrant neighbors. We provide interpretation to lower the barriers that already exist for conversations to happen between these two groups. It is also, another goal is a level of civic education that new, new covers, there's so much new going on that probably civic education takes, you know, it's not a super priority early on, but we hope that people will take an interest if they get to meet their city council member or their county board member that represents them and understand a little bit more about what they do and hopefully when they become citizens and eligible to vote, they will remember that and vote as well as advocating for themselves and their communities. - And the League of Women Voters is one that you mentioned that will also be there and so the way you just mentioned it sounded like probably the majority of your clients are not eligible to vote right now and maybe that's something the League of Women Voters are gonna be talking about because you just said when they become citizens so that's what props my question. - So many of the folks that we serve are not currently eligible to vote. Some are or some will be soon. Usually people who are on the path to citizenship, it takes about five years for that to happen. So it's not that long of a time and people can still be learning and understanding what to do when they become eligible. - Right and also what you mentioned about giving them this opportunity to meet people from local governments who are serving their needs right now or whose services they can access and they can't necessarily vote for them, I guess, but they can interact with all the programs that are available through the city and the county. - And I think it's important to remember that even though they may not be eligible to vote, they are still constituents. - Right. - So I think that that's something that escapes a lot of people sometimes and it's important to remember that even though they can't vote, they can still advocate, they can still seek services from their elected officials. - Right. And on the immigration and that whole immigration front, you also operate on your websites in like nine to five immigrants can come and learn and yet services related to their immigration status and to becoming citizens. How does that work and who's involved in that? - Yeah, we have a team of three legal service providers that provide legal immigration services. So folks that are eligible for benefits, for immigration benefits, but can't afford a private attorney. So this program is in place to help those immigrants be able to access those benefits that they might be eligible for and apply for those to USAS and get assistance from our legal services then. - And you interact or refer to the Community Immigration Law Clinic, Silk? - We do, yeah, the our legal team is in close contact with Silk and referrals back and forth, happened very much. - And as Lee said at the beginning, when we're beginning the interview that we're gonna have some opportunity to talk about volunteers, you're the paid staff, they're the directors who are making sure that these programs go and operate, but the people who are actually providing the service, the food pantry, the housing assistance kinds of things are most of those are volunteers, I guess. And how do you go about recruiting them? Where are they coming from? - Yeah, thank you. We do utilize volunteers in all of our programs. In fact, every year we have about a thousand different volunteers that participate in various ways. So yeah, in our food pantry, for example, many volunteers helping stock food and helping dispense the food to the clients that come. We have a food pantry garden out on the west side where we have many volunteers that work at that garden that provides produce both to our food pantry and to our free meal program. The free meal program itself probably has over 150 volunteers every month that work in it. So a lot of volunteers come from being obviously affiliated with the church. We get many volunteers through the Catholic parishes, but we also get volunteers from all over, from businesses, from a lot of college students volunteering, especially right now as-- - School starting, yeah. - We give a number of students and interns starting. And then we, like a lot of no-cool nonprofits, volunteer advertised through United Way and the volunteer or a website that United Way runs. So various, various ways of getting volunteers, but it is really the lifeblood of the organization and the number of volunteers that we are able to-- - So how do people go through the process of becoming a volunteer? - They should check out our website. - And that's it. - At cmcmedicine.org. Yeah, so they can check out our website and get in touch with our volunteer coordinator. I think that basically if you wanna volunteer, I think that we can probably find something for you to do. Another thing that we're looking for people to do is gleaning at grocery stores around the area. - And I thought you were gleaning from trees, that's what I think of a first one. Okay, but tell me more about gleaning. - Well, so very often grocery stores are throwing away things that are still edible and would very much like to donate that to a food pantry. But then the challenge becomes getting, you know, transporting that. So even if it's once a week or once every couple of weeks, we could definitely use people to pick up food for the food pantry. - Right, so if people were wondering to be involved in that part of the program, then could contact at cmc and train them how to do that and how to interact with the grocery store. - Yeah, I mean, there obviously a number of food programs in some of the larger grocery stores are already donating. But where we're looking to is there's many immigrant owned grocery stores that have opened in recent years and they may not be as tied into the food donation system that exists in Dane County. And so, and as we're serving primarily immigrants in our food pantry, to be able to get foods from those different local stores would be very beneficial. And so kind of helping them donate would be is a goal that we have. - You're listening to the world view feature for this Sunday, September the 22nd. I'm Gil Halsted and we're talking with Steve Morris and Becca Schwartz, the director and associate director of the Catholic Multicultural Center here in Madison. And I wanted to ask you, when I was looking at the website on the immigration services that you're offering, it was linked me to another site, I think, about different events coming up. - Are you involved in this, there is actually a conference coming up in DC, the end of the month, called the Immigration Law and Policy Conference in DC. Are there people that you're working with that are involved in that and do you know anything more about that? - It is. - It's an annual conference. - Yeah, and I think it's run by clinic. - By county, yes, that was the site I liked. - Catholic Legal Immigration Network, which is a national organization, which we are a member of, and they provide resources and technical assistance to non-profit immigration legal programs around the country. And so, yeah, that conference is one that I believe staff in our program is going to attend remotely, they're not going-- - They're not heading out to Georgetown. Okay, to the university, okay. - And so, but along those lines, I'm sure that the issues that are going to be coming up there are ones that are being addressed in the immigration services that you're offering at CMC, and I don't know from your perspective whether you are seeing, what you are seeing and hearing from people coming in now about concerns they may have about the central role in all of the political campaigning that's going on right now that focuses on the current immigration situation and immigration law and what the candidates are saying. Do you get any sense from clients coming in about tensions rising or concerns that they have about that? - Yeah, there is a lot of concern right now. A lot of clients are worried about what's going to happen in the election, and actually many clients who are eligible for certain benefits that will make their status more concrete are trying to get those in place before the election and that it may or may not be possible based on time that it takes for those processes to get completed, but that definitely over the last year has been a concern of many of our clients wanting to try and get things filed and approved before the election. But yeah, there is definitely a lot of concern in the immigrant community, but it's been hearing that too. - Yeah, a friend of mine who was recently, she's actually a client of CMC too, but she recently got her green card and just today she was saying how she felt more safe right now since the election is coming up. - So I wanted to shift back now. We got about 10 minutes left to talk about this event again, coming up to explore that a little bit more. And that's the, what did you call it? - Immigrant town hall. - Yeah, the town hall. So tell us a little bit more about that. When is it happening again? And who from the city and county are gonna be involved? - It's happening this weekend and I don't, I don't have it off the top of the weekend right now. - No, Sunday, next week, Sunday. - Yeah, sorry. - Next week, yeah. We're still on the weekend right now. - The coming weekend. - Okay. Sorry. - That's okay. - And I don't have the list in front of me, but I know that we have several, several representatives from each level of local government. We have, I think some mayors, some former mayors. We also, I am waiting to hear back from the federal level. So it's not just local, the governor actually recorded an address that we're going to play. Yeah, it's really nice. And so it is, it's an event that I think everyone who participates in it has found it to be really, really meaningful and helpful on both sides. This is not just an event that is to educate the newcomers. It is to educate the elected officials to on what is happening in their constituency. Who is here? What are their challenges? What are the successes that they're having? - And on the challenges front, we talked about that a little bit earlier, but I mean, the major ones are, it's probably the same even for non-immigrant and not your clients necessarily your clients, but housing is a really big issue. And we didn't talk too much about what your organization can do to help really address those needs, the housing needs. I mean, do you, at the food pantry and in terms of people who are showing up at the center to access some of your programs, are you dealing with the homeless population as well? - Our free meal program definitely seems some homeless. And we do, I mean, we serve people of all backgrounds. - Never goes up. - Exactly, but the focus over the last number of years definitely has been the immigrant community, but our employment assistance program sees many people looking for jobs, obviously, but with looking for a job comes all the other things that go along with that of housing, family support, other things that they may be in need of. So the staff and volunteers in that program, although jobs may be the reason that the person came in the door, they're often helping them with various other needs that they have and referring them to other organizations and making those connections that, especially for newcomers and members of the immigrant community, they just may not be aware of these other organizations that have resources that could help them. And so making those connections is an important piece too. - Right, and one other thing that we didn't talk much about, which seems like one of the really logical ones that I've kind of forgot to talk about is the language front. I mean, you're providing ESL classes there in collaboration with other organizations or is it really, it's specific to the Catholic Multicultural Center, the classes that you're offering? - Yeah, the classes that we provide are taught by our volunteers and we have a staff member who oversees and trains the volunteers. I mean, we work definitely with other organizations Literacy Network, which is actually just down the street from our location. - So that was the case, yeah. - Yeah, so we do definitely collaborate with them and refer students back and forth, based on their needs and their schedules. But yeah, the classes that we run are our own classes that we are providing. So we're primarily working with beginners and intermediate students who are fairly newly arrived and are trying to just get basic English skills really towards getting employment. - Right, and I'm assuming those students are adults and I guess this is shifting not so much into what you're doing, but the service you're offering, but how it works for families and the role that kids who are in the schools actually play in helping parents who don't have the language deal with learning the language. And do you see that happening? I mean, how much parents who may be coming, adults who may be coming to your classes are depending on their children who are learning them language much faster? - I mean, that definitely does happen and we definitely do see that with sometimes parents relying on kids to be their interpreters, but the goal is to try and help the parents to get to a basic level of English so that they can-- - Takes the burden off of the kids. - Yeah, right. - 'Cause it is a difficult role for a child to play to sort of be that interpreter further and to be part of conversations that maybe under normal circumstances, the parents wouldn't necessarily want them to be a part of. - Right, are they might physically not be able to, like going to a job interview, for example. - Right, exactly, yeah. But yeah, so learning English is definitely a high priority for the folks that we work with and so getting into the classes and getting to that level where then it improves their employability and, you know, many immigrants, you know, and I know there's certain stereotypes of newly arrived and it tends to be not highly educated coming with not a lot of skills, but that isn't always the case. Sometimes people had professional jobs in their homelands but they're coming here and they can't do those jobs anymore because they don't have the licensure, they don't have the permissions as it were to do those jobs and they don't have English so they need to learn English just to get other jobs to be able to-- - Right, perhaps even to go and get the education they need to qualify for the licenses here because of that disconnect between the kind of certification they had before in the countries that they came from. And so we just got a few minutes left and I wanted to check back again on where some of the most recent arrivals are coming from because here at WorldView, you know, today we had stories about immigration happen. The immigration crisis going on all over the world and you told me in the beginning that the largest number are probably coming from the Americas, from Central and South America. Are there any countries in particular we're hearing a lot about more people coming from Venezuela, for example, than from other places? - I think that we are definitely seeing an increase in numbers from Venezuela. - And the other-- - I mean, definitely Africa. We've seen-- - Really used to some of the African countries. - West Africa. - West Africa. - Here. And obviously Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern countries and Southeast Asia. I mean, over the last five to 10 years, all of those areas have had certain political and other circumstances that folks are coming from those countries as either as refugees or other statuses that enable them to get to come into America. On the topic of Venezuela, we have actually another program that we want to dimension that's coming up. - Yeah, please do. - Yeah. So this is not a program necessarily aimed at clients but it's more aimed at the public so we wanted to mention it here. It's called the Culinary Passport Series. - Yes, I think I saw that. - Yeah. So Venezuela is going to be our next featured country and that's going to be happening in October and we're partnering with La Tagura Restaurant to provide a meal. The idea of this series, this dinner series is to raise awareness of the immigrant communities in our area through food. And so we're going to hear, we're going to eat some delicious food and learn more about Venezuela and what's happening there now. We've already featured Ghana and Palestine in previous dinners and they were really great. So if anyone is interested in attending the next one in later in October, they should also let us know. - I have a website or something like that. - Yeah, the website is cmcmedicine.org. - That's easy enough, that's where you get the information and Venezuelan food sounds really interesting. So, thank you. - Thank you. - To Gil and Steve. - And Steve and Becca, you appreciate it. - We have to say goodbye now. - Thanks for the opportunity. - All right. And that's World View for this week. Thank you to Steve, Maurice and Becca Schwartz for joining us today and for all they do. And thank you to the World View Collective, Guilhaalsted Buiejema, Sabia Thie, Maria Banana and to W-O-R-T, News and Public Affairs Director, Shali Pittman. And thank you for listening and please join us next week for a new edition of World View. 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