Latest News and Updates


Being a Good Neighbor Starts with a Welcome!

  Welcoming Week is a national campaign and celebration to showcase communities that strive to “be more welcoming places for all, including immigrants.” Since Buffalo’s nickname is “The City of Good Neighbors,” our theme is Being a Good Neighbor Starts with a Welcome! Here are profiles of local foreign-born people describing their journeys and how …
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August 2023 Newsletter

The latest and the greatest information from the International Institute of Buffalo in the form of our August 2023 Newsletter! Get more information about: Our next fundraiser From Refugee to Comedy: An Evening with Thom Tran on Thursday, September 28, 2023, from 6 pm-8:30 pm at the WNED Studios, 140 Lower Terrace, in downtown Buffalo …
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From Refugee to Comedy: An Evening with Thom Tran

From Refugee to Comedy: An Evening with Thom Tran A fundraiser for the International Institute of Buffalo Click Here to Get Your Tickets Now! Corporate Sponsor Info Here Thursday, September 28, 6- 8:30 pm at the WNED Studios  140 Lower Terrace, Buffalo NY Comedian and actor Thom Tran, a refugee from Vietnam, grew up in …
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Hispanic Heritage Month: Oscar de la Renta

Oscar de la Renta: Photo courtesy of Vouge, Indigital “Work hard, believe in yourself.”   –Oscar de la Renta In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, we recognize the scientific, economic, cultural, political, and social contributions of influential immigrants and refugees who’ve helped shape the vibrant tapestry of America. Today, we recognize Dominican-American designer, Oscar de …
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Editing and Proofreading for Translators: IIB Virtual Workshop

Join Ryan Green, Translation Coordinator for the International Institute of Buffalo’s Interpreting & Translation Department for a two-hour course on Wednesday, September 27th, 2023 at 5:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time (USA/Canada) that will cover editing and proofreading translated documents. Open to document translators of all levels, this course is meant to improve your document translation …
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Urgent Help Needed: Two-Alarm Fire Forces Family Out of Home

One of our newly arrived refugee client families need extra support after a two-alarm fire forced them to evacuate their home this past weekend. After an arduous journey that brought them to Western New York, community support will help them through this recent setback. The following items are urgently needed to help this family back on …
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Meet Thom Tran from Vietnam

Thom Tran In July 1980, Thom Tran and his family came to the United States as refugees from Vietnam when he was an infant. His father was a South Vietnamese Air Force pilot who escaped a POW camp. After Saigon fell, the Tran family made it to a refugee camp in Thailand. Soon after that, …
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Meet Anita Butera from Italy

  Anita Butera says she came to America by accident. In the 1990s, as a university student in Italy, she planned to travel to England to improve her English skills. An unexpected visit from an aunt wanting to visit the town where her parents were born changed that. She offered Butera a place to stay …
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Hispanic Heritage Month: Franklin Chang-Díaz

Photo Credit: NASA “I don’t think anyone in my family really believed that this was a possibility for me, and I really wasn’t expecting anybody to believe in my dream. The chances of becoming an astronaut were very low. But it was never impossible.“   –Franklin Chang-Diaz In honor of National Hispanic Heritage Month, we recognize …
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Meet Nadin Yousef from Iraq

Nadin Yousef and her family endured life in Bagdad, Iraq, under American occupation. After the United States pulled out of her country, a civil war ensued, and it became too dangerous. “Civil war is bad; you don’t know who the enemy is or who will knock on your door in the middle of the night,” …
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IIB Welcomes 31 New Americans from 15 Countries!

  We welcomed 31 New Americans from 15 countries this week. They took their citizenship oaths at the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services Naturalization Ceremony, held at the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site in downtown Buffalo on Wednesday, September 13. The countries from which these new American citizens traveled are: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Burma, …
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Meet Rubens Mukunzi from Rwanda

When Rubens Mukunzi was a journalist in his home country of Rwanda, all was fine until officials wanted him to publish more favorable stories about the government in his newspaper, Oasis Gazette. They ignored his protests that it was not a journalist’s job to publish only good things about a government at its insistence. He …
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