KARLA PORTER

The role I play in the community’s diver­sity ini­tia­tives via my posi­tion is per­haps the one I most cher­ish as we strive to help enhance the way of life in the Greater Wilkes-Barre area and region. Pop­u­la­tion 43,123 last count, the make up is 92.3% white. Post 9/11 the area is expe­ri­enc­ing an influx of immi­grants not seen since the dis­cov­ery of Anthracite coal in the 1800’s. The area has a major­ity make up of Irish, Pol­ish, Ger­man and Ital­ian descent. The new immi­grants are largely Latino.

Very close by is the not so sleepy ham­let of Shenan­doah. It’s been in the national news lately and not for pos­i­tive rea­sons. Luiz Ramirez was beaten to death there. The case has caused a lot of emo­tion through­out the region if not the coun­try. Many peo­ple are on the fence. He was an ille­gal immi­grant in a small white town. The influx of immi­gra­tion, most of it legal, causes a stir and nat­ural resis­tance to change.

The down­town cam­pus of the local com­mu­nity col­lege occu­pies the base­ment of the build­ing I work in on the Pub­lic Square. It is a very invit­ing place that offers edu­ca­tion to any­one will­ing to invest the required energy to learn. ESL classes are among the cur­ric­ula for immi­grants. Most are from Latin Amer­ica and the other onsies and twosies are from Asia, Africa and East­ern Europe. 

For years I have main­tained a pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ship with the col­lege. Through­out the past sev­eral years I have worked with it in var­i­ous capac­i­ties as a con­sul­tant and instruc­tor. I love the fact that I’m only a few steps away at my not-so-new-anymore job. As soon as the Direc­tor of Com­mu­nity Out­reach learned I was going to be upstairs he enlisted my aide in co-managing an Eng­lish con­ver­sa­tion group of ESL learn­ers once weekly at lunchtime.

I have ESL expe­ri­ence going way back to my own col­lege days in Philly with project LEIF and Cuban exiles. There was the year I spent in Spain tutor­ing Eng­lish to a vil­lage in Mal­lorca. Cur­rently, I spend three to five hours per week tutor­ing Eng­lish gratis via Skype to peo­ple from all over the world, mostly as a result of rela­tion­ships gained through a very cool web­site Eng­lish Cafe. I share, I help, I learn, I’m happy.

One day after the weekly Eng­lish con­ver­sa­tion group con­cluded its ses­sion, Peter and I some­how came up with the obser­va­tion that there are lots of native Eng­lish speak­ing pro­fes­sion­als in our com­mu­nity that learned Span­ish either in col­lege or through life expe­ri­ence. He is one. I am one. I’m for­tu­nate that my lan­guage skills have played a large part in my pro­fes­sional brand­ing as a bilin­gual. It’s no longer a learned lan­guage, it’s my co-language. But, what about those who don’t get the oppor­tu­nity to prac­tice and are or fear get­ting rusty?

A one week yearly trip to Can­cun doesn’t cut it. Bring on the Down­town Span­ish Lan­guage Con­ver­sa­tion Club.

We put our heads together and scoured our con­tact lists and came up with a com­bined list of prospects. It included native Eng­lish speak­ers and also native Span­ish speak­ing pro­fes­sion­als. I cre­ated a sim­ple flyer in Pub­lisher and sent it. We didn’t know what to expect. I took a chance and sent it to the local media. After all, this was an event of a dif­fer­ent sort in our com­mu­nity. The print media has been very sup­port­ive and gen­er­ous with col­umn space and cov­er­age in the print edi­tion and the online ver­sion. While com­ments to the Edi­tor haven’t always been as sup­port­ive, the neg­a­tive ones are waning.

Our meet­ing this month of 23 was at a down­town legal firm. We shop them around, take them to dif­fer­ent busi­nesses. We expose the busi­nesses to the group and the group gets to learn about the busi­nesses. The busi­nesses feel good host­ing a diver­sity event, the group feels good being accepted and each month it grows. The con­ver­sa­tion part­ners get to learn about each other and dif­fer­ent cul­tures in a non-judgmental envi­ron­ment where every­one has lots of ques­tions as we explore dif­fer­ent top­ics, all in Span­ish. We have formed a new com­mu­nity part­ner­ship that is very excit­ing and promises to be a model for other types of down­town grass­roots cul­tural explo­ration and events.

We’re all OK.