Aiding Baltimore refugees

Last month, four Hopkins students were awarded $5,000 in grant money to launch the Baltimore MicroFarming Project. Reflecting a growing national interest in community-based agriculture, the MicroFarming Project is aimed at providing opportunities for refugees living in Baltimore. While helping to integrate displaced persons into the larger Baltimore community, the Project will also afford refugees a chance to procure basic dietary and economic resources.
This page supports the MicroFarming Project and commends the Hopkins students for their desire to effect change. We believe it is necessary, however, that Hopkins administrators and students act on a larger scale to support Baltimore refugees.
In contrast to the other issues in which the Hopkins community has become engaged, the problems facing refugees are wholly unique. Unlike ordinary immigrants in Baltimore, they are nationless. Usually thrust from their homes to escape the ravages of war, religious and ethnic persecution or national disaster, these displaced persons are forced into a situation out of their control. Each year, it is estimated that around 900 refugees seek asylum in Baltimore.
Unfortunately, the support system for these refugees is deficient and fails to adequately address basic human needs. Although the U.S. State Department provides $850 in cash assistance for each refugee, resettlement agencies often take up to half for administrative purposes, leaving most refugees with a mere $425. Most refugees in Baltimore receive only eight months of welfare support - including food, clothing and medical services - and only two months of rent support. After that, they are on their own in a city they know nothing about.
This page feels that many individuals, upon reading these facts, would quickly desire to provide assistance. However, we believe that effective change cannot be achieved without a collective institution to bridge the divide between a sympathetic citizenry and an ill-fated group of refugees. To this end, we call on Hopkins to lead the charge. As a centerpiece of Baltimore society, education, and medicine, Hopkins can implement a number of specific policies to directly aid struggling refugees in Baltimore.
First, the University can address the health concerns of the displaced families, which often live in dilapidated housing without access to basic healthcare. As a world-renowned medical institution, Hopkins can set up a clinic to administer healthcare and provide regular checkups for refugees.
Hopkins can also focus on the institutional public health iniquities inherent in refugee neighborhoods. Poor sanitation, plumbing, electricity, and shelter all create a deadly combination. The Bloomberg School of Public Health, the largest institution of its kind in the United States, should focus on specific public health directives to address these urgent concerns.
Additionally, Hopkins has at its disposal a unique tool to combat the cultural divide between Baltimore and the refugee neighborhoods: trained language professionals. Many refugees arrive in the U.S. without any basic knowledge of the English language. To compound this problem, any comprehensive attempt by the City of Baltimore to educate the refugees is futile; the city simply lacks the resources and personnel. In contrast, Hopkins has trained linguists who specialize in languages spoken most by the refugees. The Center for Language Education, for example, offers courses in Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Kiswahili, Russian and Persian. The Center, to this end, should take the initiative in focusing on teaching the English language to the refugee populations in Baltimore.  
On top of this, the University can provide general education to refugees. Because many displaced persons have come to Baltimore to flee persecution in the Middle East, education among the individuals, especially women, is lacking. Being that many of the hostile nations from which they have fled forbid women from attending schools, refugees lack the basic knowledge to make them marketable in the workplace. Hopkins, with its esteemed faculty and School of Education, can fill this gap. Furthermore, Hopkins students - many of whom already participate in educating Baltimore youth and incarcerated persons - can specifically focus on tutoring the refugee population.
Hopkins also possesses something the City of Baltimore and other humanitarian aid organizations lack: access to mass transportation. Because refugees often do not have a steady income, it is difficult to pay for travel. This lack of immobility leads inevitably to unemployment and supply shortages. It is a vicious cycle that Baltimore refugees are trapped in. The JHMI Shuttle and other Hopkins buses can provide free and speedy transportation to medical and learning facilities, as well as to grocery stores, which are largely nonexistent in the "food deserts" to which many refugees are consigned.
Finally, these goals are not hopelessly impractical. Although there are many refugees in Baltimore, they are a relatively fixed and delineated population. The aid which Hopkins administers can thus affect many individuals personally. In time, it might even be possible to achieve a largely healthy and educated refugee population.
What's more, the Hopkins Freshman Book Read this year dealt directly with the issue of refugees in the United States. Strength in What Remains, a narrative by Tracy Kidder, depicts the plight of a man named Deo who comes to the U.S. to escape civil war in his native Burundi. It is a story that exposes the sacrifice and perseverance of refugees all across the world - triumph amidst the worst of human tragedy.
This University, in essence, has an imperative to act. It singly possesses rare resources and a vital infrastructure which can positively affect thousands of lives. The Baltimore MicroFarming Project is a step in the right direction, but only with the full force of the Hopkins institution and community can real change come to Baltimore refugees.