Gifts for Good Neighbors Final Tally

Thanks to generous people who donated $20,108.28 for gifts and gift cards! Thirty-six donors filled 42 wish lists for people from Afghanistan, Burma, Bangladesh, Congo, Colombia, Eritrea, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Iraq, Philippines, Rwanda, Saipan, Somalia, Syria, Tanzania, Togo, Thailand, and the United States (Northern Mariana Islands).

During the holiday season, we matched interested donors with a family to purchase gifts from that family’s wish list.

You don’t have to wait for the gift-giving season to help the people we serve. Feel free to do that anytime by going to our Support page.

What Type of Events Do You Want To Attend?

We are planning our events calendar and want to understand better the types of events you and our other stakeholders would want to go to.

Join the Good Neighbor Society

Our Good Neighbor Society is comprised of donors who contribute to our annual fund at $100 or more annually! Aside from helping us with our most reliable funding to help our clients, you get perks! 

Thanks for the Donations!

We brought in a little over $1,300 worth of in-kind donations this month. Even though this is a little lower than usual because of factors including the blizzard, we are grateful because whatever we get serves our New American clients. 

While we often resettle families, sometimes we serve clients who are single and don't come to Buffalo as part of a family unit. Recently, thanks to physical and financial donations, we provided all of the household goods for an Afghan client without touching any of the starter money he got to begin his life in America. Single client cases like this are always the most vulnerable to financial hardships, so it was great to do everything possible to help this person!

Finally, we appreciate the overwhelming response of the Western New Yorkers who donated about 350 winter jackets in addition to gloves, hats, and scarves. These items will help our New American neighbors navigate winters for years!

If you want to donate in-kind items or cash, please let us know!

Welcome New Americans!

We participate in the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services Naturalization Ceremony in Buffalo every month. Recently, we helped welcome 53 New Americans from Bangladesh, Belarus, Brazil, Burma, Burundi, Canada, Congo, Cuba, Egypt, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Iraq, Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, and Vietnam.

Meet Linguist Zannatul Farduas

Zannatul was born in Bangladesh and came to the US in 2015. She speaks Bangla, Hindi, Urdu, and Sylheti. She says she became a translator and interpreter to help her community and anyone who can’t speak English. She adds that she enjoys helping many people with her language skills.

If you want to learn Bangla, her advice is to be dedicated and talk with people who speak Bangla; it will take time, but she says to try your best and don’t give up.

Our dedicated interpreters and translators are our strength because they know the nuances of communicating that software can’t do. Learn more about becoming an interpreter or translator for the International Institute of Buffalo!

International Exchanges and Education

We are hosting a group of visitors from Uzbekistan through the International Visitors Leadership Program (IVLP). Their program focuses on state and local approaches to public health challenges. After they meet with experts in Buffalo, they’ll establish their own National Public Health Institute in Uzbekistan.

We’re working diligently on sending proposals for 2024 international visitor groups, including a collaboration with Rochester Global Connections on education and empowerment for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

We are excited to announce that our Model UN conference has more participation than ever! Thirty-nine local schools are participating, bringing 822 students representing 72 countries! The students submitted 129 resolutions in hopes that theirs would be selected and debated during the conference in March. 

We have also conducted two health sessions for our new refugee arrivals, focusing on nutrition and mental health (pictured above), for a total of 30 participants originally from Afghanistan, Burma, Colombia, Congo, Honduras, and Syria. 

We are planning Community World Trivia for late April – stay tuned for more details! If you’re interested in sponsoring or participating, please contact us.

Our International Exchanges and Education team is looking to a great year of programming ahead! 

Interpreting & Translation

Last month, the Interpreting team provided 1,784 interpreting services in 42 different languages. Buffalo's top requested languages were Arabic, Bengali, Burmese, Dari, Pashto, Kinyarwanda, Kirundi, Rohingya, Spanish, and Swahili.

The team offers onsite interpretation and on-demand phone and audio/video remote services in over 85 languages. These invaluable services provide comprehensive language access to limited English speakers in WNY and beyond. Click here to request interpreting services.

The Translation team completed 105 individual projects last month. Most of these projects were translated into Buffalo's top ten languages for the area's richly diverse schools, government agencies, tourist attractions, and local employers. Individual projects included personal documents, human resource documents such as employee onboarding materials, legal documents, and genealogy research. Click here to translate your documents.

Click here to learn more about what we do and how we continue to be champions for language access in Buffalo and beyond.

Take a moment to learn about our Interpreting & Translation team and how they can help your organization bridge the language access gap.

Survivor Support

January is Human Trafficking Prevention Month, and According to the US government, more than 27 million people around the world are targets of human trafficking and forced labor.

IIB continuously educates the community on the ways to combat human trafficking and domestic violence. 

Recently, the Western District of New York Trafficking Task Force, of which the International Institute of Buffalo is part, kicked off a series of training conferences aimed at educating law enforcement, the legal community, and non-government organizations that provide services to survivors of human trafficking. Its inaugural conference was in Jamestown and covered a victim-centered approach to identifying, investigating, and prosecuting trafficking cases and responding to trafficking victims and survivors. Presentations included sex trafficking, labor trafficking, domestic violence, and child trafficking, and services and resources that are available for victims and survivors.

Also, this month, our Survivor Support team conducted a training for law enforcement, social workers, and other community stakeholders to help them recognize the signs of Domestic Violence and Human Trafficking. It included Do's & Don'ts while working with suspected victims and how the IIB referral process works. 

Learn more about how our Survivor Support team helps people who are targets of Domestic Violence and Human Trafficking.

New American Integration

What were you doing in 2004? Can you think about all of the things that have happened to you and the folks you love in those 20 years?

After a 20 year wait in a refugee camp, we get the pleasure of resettling a family of nine coming from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). They arrived at a refugee camp in Tanzania in 2004, and after almost 20 years, they will finally be coming to the US!

We secured their housing but would love your assistance in making them feel at home, so we are accepting household goods donations for the family.

Even with the winter storm shutdowns and driving bans, our team continued outreach to our clients, provided them with winter preparedness information beforehand, and ensured they stayed safe, secure, and warm during the extreme conditions.

Overall, in January, we resettled eight families, totaling 34 people from Afghanistan, Algeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Malaysia, Myanmar, and Syria.

IIB’s Preferred Communities (PC) program provides help to our clients who have disabilities or other special medical needs. Currently, we are serving 17 clients in this program. Most notably, a family of six from Iraq who are deaf were finally approved for SSI, and now the family is financially self-sufficient and can pay their bills with no issues. They even saved enough to buy a family car!

Learn more about the great work done by our New American Integration team. 

Come Work with Us!

If your list of resolutions this year is to opt for a more rewarding career that will help your community, take a look at our careers page.