How this Girl Scout troop offers community to migrant children
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Juliana Alvarez and her two daughters left their home in Colombia about a year ago to escape gang violence. She remembers the moment she sat her daughters down to explain the journey they were going to embark on.
JULIANA ALVAREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
SHAPIRO: She told them, "we're going to face difficult situations. Things will get tough. I don't know how we're going to make it. I don't know where we will live when we get there. I don't know anything."
The journey was harrowing, but they all made it. Once they arrived in the United States, their struggles continued. It was tough adjusting to a new life.
ALVAREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
SHAPIRO: She says she remembers one of her daughters coming back from school one day, upset because a classmate had told her she couldn't come to this school because it was for white people. Alvarez showed her daughter how to stand up for herself in those situations - say, too bad. I'm a migrant, but I'm also a girl like you.
She and her girls lived in one of New York City's biggest migrant shelters for about a year where they found a special community, the Girl Scouts. Today, Alvarez is a volunteer mom leading the troop at the shelter. CONSIDER THIS - around 180,000 migrants have come to New York City in the last two years. And some of the shelters are fostering groups that offer kids a sense of belonging.
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SHAPIRO: From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro.
It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. The Girl Scouts have been part of American childhood for generations, and for the last few weeks, NPR's Jasmine Garsd has been spending time with a Girl Scout troop based in one of New York City's largest migrant shelters. All the scouts are children of families who are seeking asylum. Here's their story.
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JASMINE GARSD, BYLINE: The world is very great today. It's raining in New York City. From the outside, this building looks like any other old hotel in midtown Manhattan. But these days, it's one of the largest migrant centers in the city for families with children. Currently, around 3,500 are housed here. Inside, the light is dim, and there's the constant murmur of people shuffling in and out. But somewhere in the labyrinth of hallways, there's a room that's in technicolor.
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: Hola.
ALVAREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #1: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: Welcome to the meeting point for the Girl Scouts in partnership with New York City Health and Hospitals. The scouts start trickling in. They're all ages K through 12. They're all recently arrived migrant children from Latin America. Once they sit down, the first order of business is...
ALVAREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: "How do you feel today?" asks Juliana Alvarez, a volunteer troop leader. A girl named Alicia tries to respond in English.
ALICIA: Happy and...
ALVAREZ: Happy and...
ALICIA: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: Valiente - brave. Turns out, Alicia got a shot today, and she didn't cry once. Alvarez turns to another girl, Tahanne.
ALVAREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
TAHANNE: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: "I'm sad," she responds. "Tomorrow, we have to leave this shelter."
TAHANNE: (Speaking Spanish).
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Oh.
GARSD: About 180,000 migrants have arrived in New York City in the last two years. City government has said it's overwhelmed and implemented a 60-day rule for shelter stays. Tahanne's family's time is up. And she says she doesn't know where they're going to live tomorrow.
ALVAREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: Juliana Alvarez, the volunteer mom who leads the troop today, says she knows exactly how these kids feel. She herself lived in this shelter for about a year with her two daughters. Back in Colombia, Alvarez says her daughters were threatened by a local gang.
ALVAREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: "I was scared," she says. "I heard that on the journey to the U.S., you get raped or killed." Alvarez says it was terrifying, but once in the U.S., as a parent, your kids don't fully grasp what's happening.
ALVAREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: They tell me, "Mom, when are we going back home to Colombia? Or, Mom, why have we been eating pizza every day for four months?" During one of the breaks, I get a chance to talk to Tahanne, the girl scout who is sad today. She's 10. She's from Ecuador. I ask what she'd like to do when she grows up and she answers with a question.
TAHANNE: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: "Do you know what the sternocleidomastoid is?" I have no idea. Tahanne points to her neck. It's a muscle. She explains that she wants to be a doctor. Tahanne's family can reapply to stay here or to go to another shelter. According to the city comptroller, 45% of families whose time has ended have been able to stay in shelter or transfer. If she can't stay here, she has the option to stay with Troop 6000 meetings by Zoom. She frowns at that prospect.
TAHANNE: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: "These are my sisters now," she says.
GISELLE BURGESS: This is probably the only sense of stability that they have right now, right?
GARSD: Giselle Burgess is the founder and senior director of Troop 6000 for families living in the NYC shelter system. She got the idea over a decade ago when she and her daughters were living in a shelter in Queens. She says as soon as migrants started coming into New York, the troop was ready to create this chapter of Girl Scouts. Still, a lot of the curriculum had to be adopted.
ALVAREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: Take an activity like the cookie sales, which Girl Scouts are famous for. Here, it turns into an exercise in math and learning American currency.
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ALVAREZ: (Speaking Spanish).
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #2: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: All around the room, there's drawings of the subway lines and penciled maps of the cities, also handwritten letters. This was part of another recent project - write a letter to girls who want to come to America. Here's one of them, written by a 9-year-old scout.
(Reading) My advice for girls who want to come to the U.S. is that you have to be very strong, and you have to really want it because this country has a lot of opportunities, but the journey will not be easy.
It's a stark reminder that many of these kids recently made a journey that is dangerous, even deadly.
ASTRID: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: "When I grow up, I want to save people. A lot of people die," says Astrid. She's 12. She's from Venezuela. She wants to join the U.S. military.
ASTRID: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: "I'm ready," she says. "I walked through the jungle to get here to the U.S."
The troop has two master of social work candidate interns who attend every meeting and monitor for signs of trauma, anxiety and depression.
MEREDITH MASCARA: Outside of these doors, it is trauma.
GARSD: Meredith Mascara is the CEO of Girl Scouts of Greater New York. She says she thinks about hearing her own grandparents talk about immigration when she looks at these girls.
MASCARA: They will be the ones running the city. I'm sure we have elected officials that are passing through. It's the story goes on. It's what our relatives did. They'll be telling those stories to their kids and to their grandkids. And I'm proud that Girl Scouts is a part of that.
GARSD: But for now, it's fun and games - snacking, learning to pronounce Girl Scout cookies with names that for a non-English speaker might as well be called sternocleidomastoid cookies...
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Adventurefuls, Lemon-Ups, Thin Mints, Trefoils.
GARSD: ...Grabbing this distracted reporter's microphone to perform some tunes...
UNIDENTIFIED CHILD #3: (Singing in Spanish).
GARSD: ...And by the end of the meeting, doing the traditional Girl Scout goodbye, in which you stand in a circle, holding hands and singing a song.
ALVAREZ: One, two, three.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Singing) Make new friends but keep the old. One is silver, and the other's gold.
GARSD: Outside, the world can feel like it's on fire. But in this tiny corner, it always is a good day to make new friends.
SHAPIRO: That was NPR's immigration correspondent Jasmine Garsd reporting from New York.
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SHAPIRO: This episode was produced by Kathryn Fink and Mia Venkat. It was edited by Alfredo Carbajal, Jeanette Woods and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun. And one more thing before we go, you can now enjoy the CONSIDER THIS newsletter. We'll still help you break down a major story of the day, but you'll also get to know our producers and hosts and some moments of joy from the All Things Considered team. You can sign up at npr.org/considerthisnewsletter.
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SHAPIRO: It's CONSIDER THIS FROM NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.
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