During Atlas Week, the Saint Louis University community reflects on the opportunities and challenges that confront an increasingly globalized world. On Monday, the first full day of Atlas Week events, students and faculty gathered in the Knights Room of the Pius XII Memorial Library for a panel discussion on international refugees in the St. Louis area. Moderated by Hisako Matsuo, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of Research Methodology, the five-member panel discussed issues facing St. Louisans who have fled from war and persecution in their home countries.
According to the International Institute of Greater St. Louis, over 50,000 refugees live in the city of St. Louis. The largest group of refugees arrived here in the aftermath of bloody ethnic conflict in Bosnia. Additional refugees came from Vietnam, Laos, Somalia, Cuba and Haiti, and many recent arrivals are Iraqis, Kurds and Afghanis. The federal government chose St. Louis as a resettlement site for refugees in the early 1990s because of its relatively inexpensive housing and growing economy.
Much of the panel discussion focused on the work of a program run by the School Sisters of Notre Dame’s Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Program. The program offers free at-home English lessons to refugee women.
“We’re not trying to make independent American women out of the refugees. We’re trying to help them recapture their sense of self that they knew in times of peace,” Sister Elise Silvestri, the director of Women’s Hope, said.
The Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Program gives priority to women who have no English skills or formal education in their own language and who are suffering from war trauma.
“I tell the tutors that they shouldn’t approach their relationship with a refugee woman as that of teacher and student, but instead as a relationship between two women. We can give them the English language, which will empower them, but they can share their culture, which enriches us,” Silvestri said.
Silvestri also commented on the resilience of the refugees with who she has worked.
“I still can’t imagine, even after all the stories I’ve heard, what it is like to see your husband shot or your daughter raped in front of you. But these women go on. Their inner strength is incredible,” Silvestri said.
Stefica Bisanovic, a refugee from Bosnia, spoke on her experiences in St. Louis. A university-trained chemist fluent in German and Russian, Bisanovic came to America with no knowledge of English. After two years of tutoring, she learned enough English to go to the bank, take the bus and do business. She and her husband now own a successful trucking business and a home they share with their five children.
Polly Burton, a longtime volunteer tutor for Women’s Hope, discussed her experiences teaching refugee women English. Burton has worked with women from the Congo, Mexico and Bosnia.
“I’m not sure I realized helping the refugees would be such a renewing learning experience for me. I learned 10 times as much as I taught, including a lot about my own country. Through these women’s lens, I saw good things about my country and some unpleasant things, too. In the end, though, I had pride in America for giving these refugees a chance to start over,” Polly Burton said.
Panelist Patrick McCarthy, an associate University librarian, shared his experiences as an advocate for St. Louis’s Bosnian community. McCarthy is the author of After the Fall: Srebrenica Survivors in St. Louis, based on interviews with refugees of the brutal slaughter of over 8,000 Bosnian men and boys in July 1995. Several thousand survivors of the massacre live in St. Louis.
“As part of the Catholic Jesuit community at Saint Louis University, we are called to approach this issue from a different perspective. Instead of relying on political calculations or a fear of ‘the other,’ we must follow Jesus and open our arms to the strangers in our midst,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy told how he successfully lobbied SLU to grant a scholarship to a Bosnian refugee in the mid-1990s.
“SLU gave a scholarship to a Muslim Bosnian as a counter-witness to the Christians who committed acts of genocide in Bosnia in the name of their faith,” McCarthy said.
