Bridging Worlds Trailer
Bridging Worlds Trailer from EC Magazine on Vimeo.
ABOUT BRIDGING WORLDS
A video trailer created by Khari Johnson, Miriam Raftery, and Diana Barreto
San Diego’s East County has fast become hubs of refugees relocated from war-torn regions around the globe. Our community has the largest number of Iraq War refugees in America, as well as numerous refugees and asylum-seekers from Africa, Asia and other places. Nearly 400 refugees each month are flooding into East County.
Their stories span the breadth of human experience and illustrate the triumph of the human spirit. They are survivors of war, torture, genocide, religious persecution, starvation, years of living in refugee camps, family separation, and harrowing escapes, arriving in a new land where they face both new barriers and opportunities.
“Bridging Worlds” is a video trailer created by East County Magazine (www.EastCountyMagazine.org) to document some of these stories. The short film was created with simple equipment and a volunteer narrator in just one week, to meet a deadline for a federal grant application. This video shows some compelling personal narratives and many key issues faced by a generation of newcomers who are bridging worlds upon arrival in our region. Our mission is to expand our award-winning nonprofit media outlet to include a new BRIDGING WORLDS website or website section devoted exclusively to refugee issues in our community.
We aspire to obtain grant funds, donations, and sponsors that will enable us to obtain professional-quality video and sound equipment, editing software, and hire a team of professional videographers and journalists to fully document the personal stories, challenges and achievements of refugees in our region, as well as provide a wealth of tangible online resources and other resources for the refugee community.
Their challenges are enormous. Many arrive here speaking little or no English. Some speak obscure dialects. Some have lived their entire lives in refugee camps and are illiterate even in their own languages. Others are highly educated professionals—doctors, teachers, engineers-- but are unable to obtain licensing in America. Finding jobs and bringing family here to join them are constant challenges. Federal aid has been slashed. Few people realize that in late 2009, the U.S. government cut aid to refugee families from eight months to just one—forcing them onto state assistance programs. Many of those programs are falling to the budget axe in our cash-strapped state. Losing cultural identity is another issue, as refugees forge bonds with others from their homelands in an effort to keep their music, arts, storytelling and other traditions alive.
A Refugee Summit was convened in fall 2009 at Cuyamaca College locally, as we reported in November. Our coverage drew praise from the Chancellor and other event partners in business, education, the faith-based community, and social service providers. These community leaders and the refugees themselves seek ways to share information and resources, but lack a common vehicle to communicate.
We aim to fill that gap and more by creating our “BRIDGING WORLDS” website that will be devoted exclusively to refugee stories and issues. Our vision is to document their compelling narratives, much as journalists documented stories of Dust Bowl victims in the 1930s and holocaust survivors after World War II. Starting with a series of webinars published online, we ultimately aspire to produce a documentary film and have commitments of support from prominent filmmakers once we obtain funding.
Beyond documenting refugees’ stories, we seek to identify both needs and positive programs that have been implemented locally by nonprofits, private organizations, companies, government entities and educators that are achieving positive results for the refugees. Such programs could be replicated in other regions with high concentrations of refugees. We will also identify barriers to successful assimilation and where possible, potential solutions.
East County Magazine also seeks to create online community resources for refugees and those who serve the refugee populations. At the Summit, we learned that refugees often have trouble finding translators, locating text books in their native languages, and learning even such basic skills as how to read grocery labels, where to find cultural programs, how to access public transportation, and how to connect with employers willing to hire refugees. We can provide such information online, available free to all. In addition, we plan to launch an online discussion forum on refugee issues.
Our vision also includes creating an online gallery showcasing arts, music and other cultural elements from the various groups of refugees who now call East County home. Connected to that effort, we have also forged a partnership with another local nonprofit, Sacred Rocks Reserve (a secular facility that recently won a national prize for its sustainable business practices). Owners of Sacred Rocks Reserve seek to create an artists’ colony where refugees can develop artistic skills in a serene retreat, also creating a revenue stream for the refugee artists by selling their works through local galleries and a portal on our site. That project will also give refugees job-training skills in creating green/sustainable buildings to house refugees as well as studios and gallery space at the artists’ colony. East County Magazine will document the progress of the arts colony project and host events at the facility.
East County Magazine is an award-winning nonprofit , nonpartisan online media outlet founded in November 2008 with a grant from San Diego Foundation for Change. We are published by the nonprofit 501c3 Heartland Foundation, best known for helping Cedar Fire victims rebuild their lives, providing job training in low-income communities, fostering public art and community education, and emerging on the forefront of the green jobs revolution.
In October 2009, East County Magazine swept the San Diego Press Club awards with 18 journalism prizes, beating out far more well-funded contenders. We were named best general interest website in San Diego County and second best news site (after the Pulitzer-prize winning San Diego Union-Tribune). Our awards included honors for investigative reporting, general news reporting, and multi-cultural coverage.
We have letters of support for our Bridging Worlds project from prominent community leaders including the Viejas Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, the curator of Heritage of the Americas Museum, the curator of San Diego State University’s Museum of Photographic Arts, numerous humanities scholars from UCLA, UCSD, SDSU and community colleges, a top representative at the International Rescue Committee (IRC), the Grossmont Union High School District, lthe Rancho San Diego-Jamul Chamber of Commerce, local elected officials and social service providers, the author of a critically-acclaimed book on the Lost Boys of the Sudan, a national award-winning Newsweek journalist, an Emmy award-winning documentary producer, and many others.
Readers who wish to support our Bridging Worlds project and/or or the Artists’ Colony for Refugees project in any capacity, please contact editor@eastcountymagazine.org.