Five Towns Community Center helps Central American migrants

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Sasha Young, the director of Gammy’s Pantry at the Five Towns Community Center in Lawrence, has a new challenge on her hands these days, and it is testing her knowledge of Spanish.

The community center’s services include an Aid to the Foreign Born program, which focuses on new arrivals from other countries, many of whom need help with their English and their knowledge of American culture. The center has recently welcomed an unspecified number of migrants. “It’s been kind of crazy,” Young said.

Gammy’s Pantry provides not only food, but also clothing and other items to 200 people per day who are in need, which has been of great help to the newcomers, who aren’t familiar with changes of season. Most of them, Young explained, come from much warmer climates, such as the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

“We are seeing many new entrants . . . coming in with shorts and T-shirts alone,” she said.

Providing clothing for them has, fortunately, not been an issue for the center. The services the migrants need vary, but a majority need help learning English — classes that the center recently started, Young said, adding that the center serves 5,000 families who are registered for food aid through Long Island Cares and Gammy’s Pantry.

The facility’s executive director, K. Brent Hill, has seen community members help the migrants in many ways, from donating clothing to canned foods to their time, to help them in other ways. “Sometimes people just want to come and help in our citizenship class and our Spanish-to-English class,” Hill said.

A good portion of the migrants are children. “Minors come through without their parents,” Hill said, “so that’s been kind of disturbing for us.”

Asked whether the appearance of more of these newcomers — whom Young prefers to simply call “entrants” — is linked in any way to efforts by officials in Republican-leaning states to send them to Democratic-leaning states,

Young was quick to respond, “I don’t get into the politics of it. We’re here to help the people regardless of how they got here. We want to make sure we go above and beyond to provide them with food, services, clothing and a support system.”
And she is doing her best to learn their language.

Byron Alvarado Valiente is a board member who has been involved with the center since 2009, and has seen Young do everything in her power to make anyone who walks through the door comfortable. “Sasha knows a little Spanish,” Valiente said. “I would say maybe 50 percent.”

Roughly 2,000 pre-paid cellphones have been donated to the center, Young said.  The entrants have been provided with phones to call family in their home countries. The center’s goal is to offer them the necessary resources so they can find places to live and jobs in local communities.

“If they’re here,” Young said, “that must mean they have family within our community.” Because they found their way to the Five Towns, she added, it’s more than likely they have relatives already living here.