Student Reflection: Kelly Klus
East Central Illinois Refugee Mutual Assistance Center
My name is Kelly Klus- I’m a senior
in my final semester (YIKES!) at the University of Illinois. My diploma will
say that I’ve studied Psychology and Spanish in my four years here—but I spent
so much time dabbling in classes, wandering and changing my major, career
plans, and pursuing different interests that I think it would be more accurate
if my diploma said something more like ‘Miscellaneous Studies.’ One thing that
has stayed consistent is my desire to learn and speak Spanish well, to be able
to interact with the wide varieties of cultures that speak Spanish.
This semester, I’ve been
volunteering Tuesday mornings at ECIRMAC. The center is a small room in the
church on Green Street in Urbana. The room fits four desks, a copy machine, and
3 filing cabinets—but leaves little to no room to maneuver around the room.
There are schedules, calendars, and pamphlets taped to the walls in different
languages. In a normal day, the doorbell rings every 5 to 10 minutes and the
phone rings (what seems like) constantly. Whoever is at the refugee center
working at the time will hum, mumble, call out, “What do we need to file this
for so-and-so?” “Who has the file for so-and-so?” Spanish, English, and
Vietnamese are spoken throughout the day, sometimes interchangeably. Frustrations
with DCFS will be expressed, with the process for SNAP forms, with clients’
employers—but jokes are not few and far between and the women are laughing more
often than not. Clients come and go, have short conversations or stay and spend
time filling out forms with the five women who work at the center. The clients
leave the center with more confidence about their taxes, about their health
insurance coverage, about the translation of their birth certificates, about
bills and upcoming appointments. They leave with more reassurance that they
will be able to continue to support their family when they have all of the
correct paperwork to continue receiving SNAP cards or have the correct
paperwork to obtain and keep a job. I have been consistently surprised and in
awe of the sheer amount of people that the women in the center are able to help
each day.
This is the first year I’ve lived
in an apartment and I’ve been responsible for my own electricity, cable, and
car bills. The four girls and I that live in the apartment have a difficult
time figuring out the bills, making sure everything is correct and getting them
paid on time, and we are privileged to speak the language in which the bills
are written and the people speak when we call to have questions. I cannot
imagine how difficult, scary, and destabilizing it would be to try to deal with
these things in a language in which I was not extremely confident. Receiving a
bill, a letter, or a phone call in a language that was strange to me in a
country that was relatively new to me would be a very disconcerting
event—having a place like the Refugee center is an indispensible resource.
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