By Ruchi Naresh
MASC 686

Richmond, Va – On a sunny afternoon in mid-April, the entrance of a residential complex in South Richmond is a quiet neighborhood. Amal Damaj, part of a refugee assistance committee at the Islamic Center of Virginia, is about to introduce me to an Iraqi refugee family she has been helping for the last nine months.

As we stop outside the apartment, children have gathered for after-school recreation. There is a continuous row of apartments adjoining each other. Two apartments have windows sealed with wooden planks.

Majda Hassan, a widow and mother of five, came to United States through Refugee and Immigration Services in August 2008. The apartment is equipped with all the basic furniture and accessories, and the living room extends further inside into a cozy kitchen area. On the right is the staircase leading up to the bedrooms. Upstairs from one of the bedrooms, Akon is playing on the radio. Hassan lights a cigarette and gets comfortable on the couch. She is dressed in a knee-length denim skirt with a diagonal striped top and a pink sweater over it.

Hassan starts filling in the details of her life old life in Iraq and new life in Richmond. Hassan’s husband was killed in a car accident in Baghdad, where the family spent all their lives. With the head of the family not shouldering responsibility and eight years of war and terror, Hassan feared that her children were no longer safe and wanted a better future for them. Before starting a new life in America, Hassan was working at a managerial level in the ministry of transportation. As for her husband, three years before his death he was unemployed for most the time.

Click here to listen to an audio slideshow on the Islamic Center of Virginia trying to help the community in times of need and Majda Hassan's link to the center

She speaks in broken English and Damaj has to leave us for some time. I try to comprehend; currently Hassan has a part time job at a school cafeteria as a cashier. So far she feels there hasn’t experienced many language barriers at work.

“No problem. At work they understand me,” says Hassan, explaining further that she is just managing with a family of six. Her fingers touch her forehead and her face gestures up, as if saying that by God’s grace she is fine.

Her oldest son, Mustafa (the second to the oldest of all children) also contributes financially by working at a restaurant as a dishwasher. Yet a huge of chunk of the dual income goes to paying the monthly rent. The first month in the country was overwhelming with Hassan having no car or and very limited public transport available.

Part of Damaj’s undertaking is to help families with their trips to the grocery store and check for immediate needs the services haven’t fulfilled. Also, she finds donors who can help with money and household requirements such as television and furniture. Damaj has helped at least 12 refugee families since last year and personally seen them transition to a new country.

“When they first come here they are pretty much home bound, they can’t go anywhere. People from Refugee Immigration Services would come and take them,” she says. “And you know Richmond bus service is not that great. So it was very hard for them.”

The Immigration Services is required to pay for refugee families’ rent, utility bills and food supplies. For the first three months, Hassan didn’t see a penny. When she approached the services she got answers like, “It’s coming and my papers are lost.” She adds, “Amal helped me with money.” Damaj had acquired some funds which helped Hassan in buying a used car.

Talking about Damaj Hassan, she smiles and says, “Amal…I shy from her. Because she helped me very much since I came here.” For Hassan, Damaj explains later, there are times she had to swallow her pride and ask for help. Hassan, an educated working woman felt uncomfortable asking help for little every need. This is one of the biggest adjustments she and her family are still making.

Before the war Hassan was happy with her life in Baghdad. Since her arrival Hassan has had to depend on the Immigration Services for giving her a home, money for food and utilities and assistance for finding a job. In the last two years, her 17-year-old daughter, Ola has had three operations for her back. The last one was in Richmond and she has still not recovered fully. She has been schooling from home.

Refugees are entitled to eight months of medical treatment through the services. Over the last year, the Refugee Immigration Services have been overwhelmed with requests for Medicaid. Ola wasn’t able to receive her Medicaid and Hassan was not familiar with the system and has been at the mercy of whoever can help her. Hassan herself has heart problems which restricts in taking up a full-time job.

This year Hassan’s oldest daughter, Toka, 19, got married to an orphaned refugee boy from Iraq. He has a part-time job but lives with the Hassans for now. Previously he resided in the same locality. In Hassan’s opinion it makes more financial sense for the entire family to stay under one roof than endure more living expense for an additional home. Toka just finished her high school and wants to pursue her college education but it’s a “maybe, someday” thought.

Outside the living room window the neighborhood kids are still playing. Hassan points out and says that lately the kids have been throwing stones at their window and she called their main residential office to replace the glass with wooden planks. Their Iraqi neighbors have been through the same. “I don’t know who to complain and why they do… I don’t know,” Hassan says.

The children know the Iraqi families cannot speak English and have been picking on them, thinking they are a soft target. Hassan doesn’t feel right to call the police for little things. Damaj has been seeing this and explains the situation. “You try to talk to the neighbors if you have an altercation with the neighborhood kids. You go and talk to their parents,” she says. “But the language is not helping them.”

After days of these children vandalizing, Hassan went to speak to their parents. The parents were agreeable and scolded the children and gave a promise to Hassan that this problem won’t happen again. But Hassan says, “We’ll have to see.”

Hassan has her siblings in Baghdad but they are married with children of their own to take care of, they have been unable to help her after her husband’s death. Even though life in Richmond is a big adjustment they are not planning on going back home. The mother and daughter are unanimous. “Life in our country is very dangerous,” Toka says, “We are afraid to go back.”

By Ruchi Naresh
MASC 686

“Of course there is no electricity there,” says Fox, recollecting his experience. For the ten days he spent there he was accompanied by a car and driver.

He trunked all the water and food supplies in the car and used the car’s electrical system for his communication devices. Everyday he spent 16 hours reporting, shooting, editing while constantly sending his work back to his editor. On many occasions when Fox is in middle of nowhere, the UN has provided space to pitch a tent and use electricity from their generators.

“As long as you have a car and a driver who can fix the car, you can live on that for weeks,” says Fox, who survived a month covering the Iraq war couple of years ago.

This is just one of the daily challenges Fox faces as an international journalist.

Before he even leaves, immense research must be done on the country and its culture. Depending on the deadline his editor gives for the story, the journalist has little time to get familiar with the new surroundings, conquer language barriers and find the right people for the story. The stakes get really high reporting in the midst of a war-torn zone.

Travis Fox has these issues on the back of mind but never takes them to work while covering a story.

“I feel like it’s my responsibility to take these experiences and share it with as many people I can and hopefully, they will have a part of that experience that I’ve had,” says Fox.

Fox is one of the rare species of backpack video journalists who works as a one-man band and many consider him a pioneer in introducing web video and multimedia story-telling techniques to traditional media. He has been a part of Washington Post for a decade and his work has earned him six Emmy nominations, with one win. In 2006, his series of daily news videos on the Hurricane Katrina won him the Emmy. One of his other acclaimed stories was “Rebuilding a Fortress, Rebuilding a Life” in 2002, a web-exclusive feature on a construction worker, Michael Flocco, who lost his son in the Sept. 11 attacks and was coping with the loss while rebuilding the site.

“There is a range of journalism, from investigative to community driven. And there is what I do. I don’t do investigative,” Fox explains. “What I am doing is taking people to a place and transporting them and introducing them to characters they haven’t met. I want to give them that experience online that they can’t get reading a newspaper or a magazine.”

Being a video journalist was a chance encounter for him. Fox recollects, “I started doing video before it was popular online and in some ways I fought against the current. And when the advertising model caught up the editors were really excited about it.”

Ten years ago, Fox was a photographer for the Post and he began by just experimenting with the video camera. Fox was producing a few videos but his editor was unaware of his secret endeavors.

Come to think of it, Fox was at the right place at the right time and Post was the perfect opportunity to transition as a video journalist. Fox schooled himself by going out and shooting video or he describes it, “I learned by doing it. By process of elimination, which is a really good way to learn.”

Currently, when newsrooms are cutting down budgets and resorting to staff reduction, Fox is a valuable asset for the company. He travels alone for his national and international projects just armed with his camera, shooting and editing his own work while providing multimedia elements to the story.

Rich Beckman, professor of visual journalism at the University of Miami, has worked with Fox for various workshops at the university. In Beckman’s view, Fox lets his subjects tell their own story.

“That adds a lot to the emotion, cultural understanding, adds to the relevance and the entire environment to the situation,” Beckman says. “His style actually is one that promotes effective online and video story-telling.”

The one-man band model comes naturally to him. But that makes his challenges tougher. Fox has to prepare much in advance before reaching his intended location. He goes through a process of reading books and articles on the country and the issue, followed by talking to local people through think tanks, college professors or the staff at United Nations. But even with a general plan setup in his mind there are surprises along the way. He points out, “It’s a delicate balance of being prepared and deciding on what to do and falling through and being able to actually report.”

The most common problem for Fox is interviewing people that are not worthwhile for his story.

“Certain people don’t give you information that lends itself to video. Some people take a long time to explain what they are trying to say,” Fox says. Usually to attain relevance for a video story the sounds bites need to be smaller. Sometimes the subjects are just references from local people that go nowhere—and so Fox has to start all over again on the day’s work.

In 2008, Fox spent ten days in Medellin, Columbia for his seven-minute online feature – “A Fragile Renaissance” which he considers one of his most in-depth works. The city of Medellin was formerly known for its drug trade, violence and its notorious drug king pin, Pablo Escobar. Fox’s feature was about that history and how globalization in a particular industry helped the city acquire the much-needed economic facelift. Fox’s first thought, “How do you tell that story…with video?”

Fox started looking for someone who worked in a textile factory, an industry that grew since the free trade with United States. He made contacts at the factory and met some people who helped him connect with his final interview subjects. After talks with several people, Fox found a person who worked at the factory but lived in those formerly dangerous localities.

“In terms of script writing,” Fox explains, “You have to capture someone’s attention right from the very beginning and you often don’t capture attention with an esoteric broad storyline.”

A story capturing a city’s economic status is often attached with facts and statistics. Fox’s first intention is to make the viewer care about the character and then weave in information that affects the subject. He makes a character-driven story and sprinkles information throughout.

Tom Kennedy, former managing editor of multimedia for Washingtonpost.com, gave Fox an internship at the Post in 1999, has seen his work evolve as through time.

“He understands the value of what I call a subject-driven narrative,” Kennedy explains. “Meaning that the actions and dialogues of characters in his videos actually propel the story forward, much like a Hollywood film.”

As Kennedy understands it, Fox reports a story by removing himself from the story.

“I think that makes for a pretty strong way of expressing a story, in which you really feel the emotions of the story and the momentum of a story as much as you might feel the weight of his reporting.”

Click here to listen to Tom Kennedy compare Travis Fox’s work to other international journalists

Fox considers the Medellin a safe story. In the last few years, Fox has covered the war in Iraq and the crisis in Darfur. In the end it depends on the country he is traveling to. Most recently, Travis was in Mexico covering the war on drugs (“Mexico at War”).

With Mexico’s new president, Felipe Calderon, declaring a war on drug traffickers, lawlessness has prevailed and during the past two years, 10,000 people have been killed. During his time spent in Mexico, Fox never felt targeted but was worried that he might get in middle of the shootouts between the drug cartels and the police.

His editor, Kennedy was also concerned about Fox’s safety because of the increasing level of violence and the gangs by nature being indiscriminate about who they kill.

As a habit, Fox keeps a low profile as journalist and while in Juarez he took many precautionary steps. During this interview, Fox was conscious for a brief moment thinking he is revealing all his secrets but continued anyway. While there, he made sure he took different cars everyday and never got into a routine. His breakfast venues and timings were different everyday so it would be hard to chase him. At one point he even considered switching hotels.

“Especially in Juarez, there is a security vacuum as well. There’s no police and you can’t really trust anyone. So anything could happen and in those situations,” reveals Fox.

One night Fox was filming a murder site and was accompanied by the body retrieval team. Two people were attacked while driving just mile away from the U.S. border. One person died and the driver somehow survived but was injured. The rescue crew that was taking the driver in the ambulance was ambushed on the way and the driver was shot dead. Later discussing this incident with Kennedy, Fox revealed that it was a distressing experience and for the first time, felt his life was in jeopardy.

Fox feels that being a solo video journalist in situations like these can be very advantageous. In case of any danger or emergency he can move very quickly and relocate. Other stories involve sensitive subjects. Fox thinks when it’s just one person with a small camera, his subjects are less intimidated and are more open to discussing intimate emotions.

While doing video the series in Darfur, Fox interviewed a young woman for a piece who was gang raped by nine men.

“And this was as sensitive as it possibly could be,” says Fox about the subject matter.

The woman, Sadiya Ali Mahmoud, spoke a dialect of Arabic and understood why Fox wanted to do the story and how important it was for people to know about it. A translator accompanied Fox, and during the interview with Mahmoud he tried to make her feel comfortable in every way. On occasions he called her relatives to be in the room. At times, Fox sent the interpreter out and her words were translated later on the screen.

“Nothing is better than showing that you need their time, showing that you care and that there is a personal connection there,” he says.

Click here to listen to Travis Fox talk about his experiences as a video journalist.

Often at their workshops, Beckman has seen Fox teaching students to get to know their subjects and be intimate with them and build a trust, much like his work on the field. “One thing about Travis is that he doesn’t guard any of his secrets,” shares Beckman. “He is very open and discussing of his technique and how he works. But that doesn’t mean that people can necessarily do it.”

Fox’s expertise comes with years of experience and a strong sense of moment and Beckman is especially impressed because Fox is not hung up on fancy camera equipment. All he cares about is the story.

Interestingly, Fox speaks only one language (English) and has managed to be in places like Darfur, China, Mexico and Iraq where he is dealing with multilingual demographics.

“Even with a translator I often like to just have some time with the people. Even if I can’t talk to them I can communicate. Most places in the world people are used to coming into contact with people who don’t speak their language,” reveals Fox.

For him it isn’t solely about language, he feels as a journalist he can project a level of commitment and interest towards his subjects through body language.

Ben De La Cruz, the interim director of multimedia at Washington Post who started at the company around the same time as Fox says “he is a tenacious reporter, so he knows what makes a good story. I think that’s what enables him to sort of persevere and succeed is that he’s is able to keep at it and not give, which is what your best reporters do.”

De La Cruz also points out that the reason there are very few singular-international journalists like Travis because the job entails a lot of hard work coupled with multiple skills and ability to perform under tough conditions.

Though Fox works without a crew, a translator or a fixer is a quintessential requirement for his international trips. That remains his biggest expense for the trips. On average, he pays $100-a-day for a translator which in some places it goes up to $200. The Post pays for all his expenses and usually is not very rigid about budgets. His bosses set up a general expectation for budgets and Fox tries to adhere to it. Yet on many occasions and cross country trips Fox has driven a rental car, eaten fast food, and stayed in less-than-perfect hotels. Outside the country, he has taken local buses, carts, rode on a back of a motorcycle and even hiked in mountain regions. In the end, fewer people in the crew makes his travel easier.

With the current financial crisis in the newsrooms cutting down on international reporters and bureaus, downsizing seems to be the first and obvious choice for media companies. The Post made some cutbacks in terms of number of bureaus abroad and hired stringers in those locations. But Fox assures that his company’s management has made no indication to eliminate foreign coverage.

Over the years, the Post audience has been more interested in issues that matter to Washington and the central government. The Mexican drug war feature by Fox had relevance because it was partially funded by American taxpayer money.

“We are moving away from a mass market and into localized markets,” says Fox, “So I don’t think it’s necessarily local. You could focus on spread of democracy or on globalization and certain outlets would be the go to place for these certain themes. And within those themes there are small focus themes.”

Fox and his team are constantly brainstorming on stories that have ties to Washington, which surprisingly many do.

“That’s just indicative of what is happening with the media broadly,” he adds.

Washingtonpost.com is one of the successful online models in traditional media and the website is a separate entity from the newspaper. The company has enjoyed a good reputation for years and now it is trying to build new communities online. All that said, Fox claims the website revenues are rising but the fall in print revenues is even greater.

Fox is sure there is no short-term growth in any newsroom in the country but he hopes that isn’t the case in the long run. It is an impressive track record in journalism, visual story telling and reporting for Travis Fox, but has he ever thought of slowing down and taking lesser risks? Apparently not. Fox laughs, saying many people are jealous of his job. In the next few months Fox will be getting ready to cover Mexico for more on his “War on Drugs” series. But there is one downside for Fox in being an on-the-go global journalist: He is unhappy about spending time away from his wife.

Media on Travis Fox:
Poynter Institute faculty Al Tompkins writes Fox’s feature in crisis in Darfur:
“This is a story that utilizes silence and quiet moments to teach us something about what life is like in a refugee camp. I especially like the way Travis uses the shots of barren soil to transition from character to character. And his use of natural light is nothing short of spectacular.”

Nightline executive producer Tom Bettag writes about Fox’s feature on Rebuilding a Fortress, Rebuilding a Life:
“This is an extraordinary piece of work by videojournalist Travis Fox, sensitive and insightful. He has captured Mike Flocco’s agony and struggle without being intrusive. This is first-rate journalism that viewers won’t soon forget.”

New York Magazine:
The Washington Post’s Travis Fox, 31, is the opposite kind of natural-born Web-video genius, a globe-trotting hard-news yin to Carr’s (David Carr) rowdy, grinning Times Square–and–Hollywood yang. Fox has made ambitious, subtle, tough, and remarkably beautiful Web docs about a man who lost his son on 9/11, the anti-government opposition movements in Egypt, the lingering effects of Agent Orange in Vietnam. Last fall, his Katrina coverage won the first Emmy in the new Web-video category. The recognition is slightly ironic, since Fox didn’t come up through TV news or documentaries, and defines himself and his work entirely in opposition to the TV M.O.

After nine years of conflict with Iraq, could you find Iraq on a map? The amount of international news Americans are receiving is dwindling, and the results are disturbing.

 “I’ve seen college students in Missouri make a map of the world on Earth Day and only have the United States contour filling up the entire globe,” said Frieda Warden, Producer for the Women’s International News Gathering Service.

 WINGS is a weekly news and current radio affairs program built by women from around the country. The organization gathers and distributes news to spread awareness of international topics and issues.

Americans have become so consumed with achieving the American dream, that many forget there’s more to the world than just America. Many have never even traveled outside of the United States.

 “Americans have been living in a mirror box for a long time,” said Warden. “I don’t even think they know what they are missing.”

Warden said that if Americans would broaden their horizons they could learn from other cultures and nationalities. She says if people embrace their commonalities around the world, they could potentially be of great interest among any society.

“Financial analysts from the U.S. would probably be really interested in news about financial analysts from Europe, or China, or South Africa. Even sports coverage in the U.S. is pretty narrowly national,” said Warden. “I don’t think Americans can afford to be so insular these days, so hopefully things will change.”

 Awareness of international affairs is more important that people recognize. We live in a global economy and many international decisions directly affect our economy, in some form or fashion.

Domestic affairs consume the minds of many, until something happens to shift their attention, such as the recent outbreak of the swine flu or an international economic disaster. 

University of Arizona journalism professor Margaret Zanger recently worked as the Iraq training director for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, a non-governmental organization based in London that specializes in training reporters in post authoritarian societies.

 Zanger was stationed in Baghdad, Iraq for a year and a half training journalists on an “international standard.” She says that most of the reporters in the Middle East were use to government censored reporting, infiltrated with opinions.

 Although Iraqi journalists were unfamiliar with the way journalism was practiced in the west, Zanger says they were often times more knowledgably about American affairs and politics than most Americans. 

 “I think that’s true almost anywhere you go outside the United States. People are much more aware,” said Zanger. “It’s Americans who live in this little bubble.” 

 Zanger says that there are many factors that contribute to America’s lack of knowledge of foreign affairs, including the size of the United States compared to most other countries.

 While living in Cairo, Egypt, Zanger spent a lot of time in Europe because of its close proximity. She says because of the vastness of the United States, many American’s don’t often travel from state to state, not to mention across the country.

 Media outlets are not immune to the current economic situation. One major effect the economy has had on the media industry is their ability to cover international affairs.

 As newspapers cut staff and reduce their content, international news has become scarcer.  The Iraq war has become mundane for readers and has slowly disappeared from the front page.

   Vice president of multimedia strategy and news for Media General, Donna Reed, says that the economy has undoubtedly affected Media General’s ability to cover international news.

“A lot of foreign bureaus have closed, even some of the larger wire services,” said Reed. “Even the Associated Press has had to evaluate where it has bureaus and how many people it has in those bureaus.”

Reed recalls that during the earlier years of the war, the Richmond Times Dispatch along with other individual papers, was able to embed reporters and photographers with Virginia troops for months.

In December 2004, Times-Dispatch reporter Jeremy Redmon and photographer Dean Hoffmeyer were stationed in Iraq to cover the war.
On December 24, 2004, Redmon and Hoffmeyer were eating with soldiers in a mess tent on one of the military bases, when according to The Seattle Times, a 122 mm rocket slammed into the tent leaving 22 people dead. It has been called one of the deadliest attacks on Americans in the war’s history.

Since 2003, the Committee to Protect Journalists reported that 138 journalists have been killed in Iraq by aggressive human action while on duty. The insurgent attack Redmon and Hoffeyer witnessed, emphasized the danger of reporting internationally. Reed says it is also a financial burden on the organization to maintain foreign correspondents.

“We’ve considered it a couple times, but it’s very expensive to equip them,” said Reed. “They have to be fitted for life jackets and all kind of other protective gear.”

Reed says the recession along with the issues being faced by many newspaper outlets across the country may have caused news organizations to under report the war and other international affairs.

Elisa Tinsley is the director for the Knight International Journalism Fellowships Program for the International Center for Journalists. The program works with journalists to improve journalism worldwide. The organization has worked with over 20,000 journalists from 176 different countries.

The program has fellows, as they are called in the program, stationed in over 80 countries, including Mexico, Pakistan, India, and South Africa.  Tinsley says that while there are some bureaus still left, the staffing within those bureaus has dramatically reduced.

“International staff used to have full crews,” said Tinsley. “Now reporters are asked to be camera men, photographers, producers and sound men,” said Tinsley.

Because of the expense of international coverage, many organizations have closed international bureaus or drastically trimmed back on resources in those areas.

Also, correspondents who remain are now being asked to cover larger areas. It is extremely difficult to cover international news thoroughly as international bureaus sizes are decreasing.

Zanger recalls her visits to Jerusalem where she would often come across reporters from the Baltimore Sun, the Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune. But, in the last 10 years news outlets have cut back on foreign correspondents.

“You don’t find them anymore,” said Tinsley. “These are fairly large newspapers and they don’t have a foreign correspondent in the Middle East anywhere.”

Local television stations and newspapers have become more dependent on news wires, such as the AP. Reed says that although Media General no longer has international reporters, each of their brands have wire editors who monitor the wire for story selections. The AP has a bureau office in Richmond, Virginia.

Stories with local angles are often the ones that make it into the paper. The amount of local news contained in the papers fluctuates from day to day depending upon special limitations.

 “We try to give people a variety. Sometimes it’s spot news, breaking news, and certainly coverage of the war, but then we also try to layer it with political and economic news,” Reed said.  “Some are just good news stories that are coming out of other countries. We look for a variety as well as what the top stories are.”

The Richmond-Times Dispatch often includes briefs on international stories. Editors have taken stories and condensed them to two or three paragraphs to give readers more of a variety.

It is the role of the producer or editor to provide the correct mix of news to society. Some journalists have even raised the question ‘does it matter if people are not concerned with international news?’

“Sometimes people don’t know what they need to know,” said Tinsley. “And that is the role of the media to bring to light the things that people need to know.”

More and more of the news content contains sensational stories. Non-stop coverage of the Octomom and the amazing British singer from the British version of “American Idol” continue to be the top headlines for many broadcast news show.
According to Neilsen Media Research, the top show in broadcasting television the week of April 27, 2009, was “American Idol.” There was not a news show listed in the top 10.

Tinsley forces herself to read every part of the newspaper, even if she does not feel like it.

“I even look at the sports section,” said Tinsley. “If I don’t, I feel like I am not informed.”

 Because of the economy, even the AP, one of the most popular wire services has begun evaluating their bureaus and staff.  
CNN currently has 47 international bureaus that reach 200 million households. But in the United States, CNN International is not one of the thousands of channels on the television guide.

Click on the map to view CNN International videos from each of its bureaus. Each location contains an annual report that lists the safety levels for journalists reporting in those areas and any unsafe situations journalists encountered in 2008. Each bureau is colored coded to represent the corresponding safety levels :green = good situation, blue = satisfactory situation, yellow = noticeable problems, pink = difficult situation and red = a very serious situation.

Werden, WINGS producer, says that American news outlets rely too much on wire services. She says that most either use the AP or CNN which are often filtered in the American interest.

Roar Nerdal is a freelance journalist in Salvador, Brazil. He was born in Norway and says he follows CNN International, Newsweek, and The Economist (UK) to receive the bulk of his international news.

“Even though this is top of line,” said Nerdal. “I feel American news lack the foreign angle. How do Brazilians, Norwegians and Chinese see the world?”

Werden suggests that more local stations partner with international media outlets to offer citizens more complete coverage.

“American’s need to understand international news from international perspectives and not only filtered through a very narrow view of American interest,” Warden said. “Americans have really been “dumbed down” by their media, hopefully they’re getting tired of this.”

There are many factors to consider when an international journalist is stationed at a bureau. Appropriate funds is the main reason many newsrooms lack international journalists.

One option that larger newspaper publishers may consider is the outsourcing of foreign news correspondents. Outsourcing will allow news organizations to save money and still report international news. Tribune Co. and Washington Post Co. are discussing such a matter now. If an agreement is made Tribune could close their own bureaus and publish stories by the Post Co.  Tribune could save millions of dollars.
Tinsley says the problem isn’t just providing international news. The media must inform society and stop providing news that the media industry thinks is interesting.

“Its balancing not just international, national and hyper-local news,” said Tinsley. “There also needs to be an effort by the media to play a role in helping people understand what’s going on in their world whether they want to know it or not.”

While local news is not as readily available as it use to be, the tools to further explore domestic coverage internationally are available, for those who desire to so. The Internet offers an assortment of international news from all around the country.

“All that info is there for free on the Internet. But it just takes more effort on a person’s part,” said Zanger. “And of course Americans, who know nothing, aren’t going to make that effort.”

The major deterrent of international news consumption among Americans is context. Many Americans don’t have a complete understanding or background knowledge of international cultures, issues, or history making it much more difficult for them to understand current news and events.

The University of Arizona recently began offering an international journalism curriculum to better educate students on covering international affairs. Program developers say that the Sept. 11, attack further emphasized the need for well-trained journalists with a thorough understanding of world issues and events.

The international journalism curriculum is collaboration among the school’s centers for American, Middle Eastern, and Near Eastern Studies departments and classes are available for any undergraduate or graduate student enrolled in either of the corresponding programs.

Zanger teaches a course called “Media coverage in International Crises” which focuses specifically on how journalists operate during an international crisis.

One of the courses offered through the Latin American Studies portion of the program is a simultaneous five credit package consisting of two classes. The first class, Press Coverage in Latin America allows students to gain an intensive understanding of a Latin American country.
Students then take an all expense paid trip, sponsored by donors and grants, to the countries the students have studied.

 “One of the most important things a journalists need to do is to background themselves on a country,” said Zanger. “One of the main things I do, and I believe the other teachers encourage students to do to is, to educate themselves very quickly but in some depth about a country before they even think about going there.”

The University of Arizona is less than an hour away from the Mexican boarder. The school launched Border Beat in the spring of 2007, an online publication published by UA journalism students.
Border Beat offers news, insight and resources about the U.S. and Mexico region. The school has also produced a bilingual newspaper, El Independiente, for almost 30 years.

El Independiente mainly covers the city of South Tuscan, which is 85 percent Hispanic. In 2005, the program extended to include the U.S Mexico border where students can use the school’s travel fund to thoroughly cover important issues. 

Zanger says the education system is also to blame for the lack of concerned citizens. In addition to teaching world history, they should also correlate history to the present. Having a tangible knowledge of world history and past affairs, assist anyone in staying abreast of international current events.

“You can’t understand Somalia today, unless you understand what happen to Somalia in the early 90’s,” said Zanger.

However, as more news organizations close foreign bureaus, there are less reporters to cover international events in Somalia and other countries. Zanger says she prepares her students for the uncertain future for foreign correspondents by encouraging them to do freelance reporting internationally and abroad. The opportunity for freelancing is growing.

In addition to freelancing opportunities that studying abroad may present, Zanger says that the cut back on foreign correspondents will ultimately strengthen international journalism, because only the passionate reporters will remain.

RICHMOND, Va. — As the saying goes, experience is the best teacher. The Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE) allows students to experience other countries through an educational exchange program.

More than 1,300 students participate in the program annually in the United States. Students come from 40 countries around the world including South Korea, Brazil and Germany.

CIEE team manager Becky Bell, says the goal of the program is to help build bridges of global understanding. Bell’s job is to place hopeful students with the most suitable host family.

“We are looking to place students anywhere in the United States, as long as we can find good families and schools that will accept them,” said Bell. “We try to match students with families that have the same interests.”

Bell finds families by networking with people around the city. Once she finds an interested family, she then completes a background check on the family. Once approved, references are checked and Bell interviews the family. She says a family must have two main qualities.

“They have to want to learn about other cultures and have a big heart,” said Bell.

Melissa Mitchem received an e-mail at work about students wanting to study in America for the 2008-2009 school year. Prior to the e-mail, Mitchem’s oldest daughter had expressed her desire to be an exchange student in another country. Mitchem however, was apprehensive about her daughter leaving  for an extended period of time.

“I thought that it would be good to have someone come to our house and stay with us,” said Mitchem. “Maybe that person would be really upset and cry and be homesick and my daughter would see that it is not a good idea to be away from your family for a year.”

Surprisingly, the Mitchem’s exchange student from Germany was the perfect fit for her family.

Hannah Prehn, 17, is from Berlin, Germany. She received a scholarship from a German organization to study in the U. S. through the CIEE program. Prehn wanted to experience a different culture, and she says the CIEE program presented the perfect opportunity for her.

“I want to make new experiences,” said Prehn. “I want to know what it is like to be in another country, so I don’t have to see what it is like through other people’s eyes.”

Bell says that students participate in the program for a variety of reasons from linguistic opportunties to educational benefits.

“We get students who want to learn English better and would like to have an opportunity to learn other cultures,” said Bell. “The program could also be a stepping stone for students to go to college or work in the United States .”

Students are responsible for their tuition, health insurance and spending money during their stay. However, since the CIEE is a non-profit organization, the organization also works closely with other agencies to supply funds for the students.

Each year between 40 to 50 students are placed in Virginia. Bell says that Chesterfield County, Hanover County and Richmond have all been accommodating in allowing students to enroll in their schools. Students stay for the entire school year, arriving in August and leaving in June.

Prehn says the biggest difference between Germany and the United States is the school system. She’s a junior at Richmond Community High School, in the city of Richmond.

“In Germany, we don’t have electives,” said Prehn. “Suddenly you can choose your class. We can’t do that.”

Bell says that the biggest obstacle for students in the program is transportation. CIEE students are not allowed to drive during their stay. In places such as Europe and Brazil, public transportation is more accessible for student use.

Students are not allowed to visit their home country during their stay in the U.S,  and Bell says that most students start to become home sick around Christmas. Parents are allowed to visit after their child has been in the U.S. for at least five months.

“Students stay in contact with their families through Skype, e-mails and texting,” said Bell.

Bell, who has also been a host parent in the past, stays in close contact with each host family. She maintains weekly communication with all CIEE families in the Richmond area.

“We are able to overcome problems pretty quickly,” said Bell.

Mitchem, Prehn’s host mom, teaches in Chesterfield County and has three daughters. Last summer, the Mitchem family went on special outings to show Prehn as much of the U.S. possible.

“In the beginning we went to Virginia Beach and spent a night in a hotel,” said Mitchem. “We drove to visit some friends in Chicago just to a give Hannah a sense that you can drive 12 hours and still be in the same country.”

Host families are not compensated for housing exchange students, nor are they required to entertain the students. However, most families do welcome and encourage students to participate in family activities.

Families are responsible for providing a safe haven, bed and two meals a day.

“That could be an expense to some families,” said Bell. “But most find that it is not a big deal to feed one more mouth.”

Host families are provided with biographies of exchange students so that they may select which student would fit best into their family. Mitchem chose Prehn because Prehn and her daughters shared similar characteristics. Mitchem says Hannah was a perfect match for their family.

“I told people that I would not do it again,” said Mitchem. “Anyone else that we got would be a disappointment. It’s like she has always been a part of our family.”

The Holocaust in Germany

Arguably one of the biggest genocides in world history, is Adolf Hitler’s annihilation of  millions of Jews during the Holocaust. The Holocaust began in 1938 in Germany, where more than 6 million Jews were killed. Germans arrived in Virginia in 1714 in, what is present day, Orange County. The German population is relatively small in Richmond. The Virginia Holocaust Museum located at 2000 E. Cary St. helps to continues to tell the story of the innocent lives lost during the Holocaust.

The sign above says "Jews Forbidden" in the Virginia Holocaust Museum. Executive assistant of the Virginia Holocaust Museum, Matt Simpson talks about the importance of the museum. Holocaust survivor Alexander Lebenstein tells his survival story from the Holocaust. Click the picture to view an audio slideshow about the Holocaust genocide.

Below is an audio clip of Alexander Lebenstein discussing his feelings after his liberation from the perils of the Holocaust.

Chesterfield, Va. – In Danielle Todd’s Head Start classroom, there is rarely ever a quiet moment.  The sounds of 3, 4 and 5-year-olds fill one of the many trailers Chesterfield County uses as a classroom.  It is the artwork on the walls and tiny tables and chairs inside the room that make the Bensley Elementary classroom look more like a child’s playroom, filled with colorful furniture and toys. Everything is on a smaller scale for the pint-sized learners.  The selection of toys seems endless, along with the opportunities to be creative.

It is Peter Rabbit day in class.  The students are getting ready to add more handmade artwork to the collection already taking up just about every inch of wall space in the classroom.

Todd calls each of her 18 students over one by one.  Things are moving a little quicker on this particular day because about half of the class is absent.  Todd says the rainy weather that day probably kept more home than usual.  Even so, the students are noisy and chatty, and just like any other classroom with young children, it’s not always easy to understand what the students are trying to say.

In Todd’s case, that’s because half of her class doesn’t speak English as a native language. Many could not speak the language at all when they first arrived in Richmond last fall.

“We are about 50 percent [English-language learners] in this classroom,” said Todd.  “That’s been one of my biggest challenges.”

About half of Todd's students are learning English as a second language. Click on the photo to see an audio slideshow.

Todd is in her second year as a Head Start teacher in Chesterfield County. Before that she worked as a kindergarten teacher at a private school in Richmond.  She says this position opened up a whole new world of challenges because of two things: Head Start and English for Speakers of Other Languages.

The two programs are intertwined in Chesterfield County because of a booming Hispanic population.  The Pew Hispanic Center reports the Hispanic population in Chesterfield more than doubled between 2000 and 2007, from 7,616 to 16,320.  They make up about 5 percent of Chesterfield’s 300,000 residents.

Pam Blackburn, the Head Start coordinator for Chesterfield’s Head Start program, said, a total of 196 children are enrolled in the Head Start program.  Most of the children are 4 years old and about half of them started in the program only speaking Spanish, according to Blackburn.

“I think Head Start has filled-in where the parents don’t speak English,” Terry Franson, the instruction specialist for English for Speakers of Other Languages in Chesterfield County, said.

Head Start is a federally funded program to give underprivileged children an opportunity they may have otherwise missed at home.  Blackburn said she has a $1 million annual budget to fund Chesterfield’s 11 Head Start classrooms.  While the main focus of Head Start is getting children ready for kindergarten, the program also works to make sure the children are healthy.

Click here to listen to Blackburn talk more about the Head Start Program

“Each child gets a checkup, we need to make sure they can see and hear,” Blackburn said. “These children need to be healthy before they can begin to learn.”

Learning for these young students often starts with a big lesson in English. English for Speakers of Other Languages, ESOL for short, is growing by leaps and bounds in Chesterfield’s ever-growing school district, Franson said.  The program dates back 20 years and today is attracting people into the county from the surrounding ones.

“There have been instances in our intake center where parents are coming in from Richmond and other counties and trying to put their children in our classrooms,” Franson explained. “We do have a very extensive program attending to the needs of an ESOL child.”

The county has ESOL programs in 46 of its 64 schools, Franson said. Most are in elementary schools.  Four of them are in middle schools and four others in high schools.  Fifty instructors teach the 2,800 students who are English-language learners.  But Franson notes that not all of the students need full-time attention.  Some of the students are being monitored only in case they need to brush up on their skills.  In fact, Franson said, after elementary schools, most kids don’t need a lot of help.

“Because the environment in kindergarten and first and second grade is so language rich our children tend to make great progress,” Franson said.

Most of the students who pass through Chesterfield’s ESOL program speak Spanish.  In fact, 73 percent are Spanish speakers, according to Franson.  Some of the other more prevalent languages are Arabic, Chinese and Vietnamese.  In Chesterfield’s 11 Head Start programs, nearly 50 percent of the children don’t speak any English when they first show up for school.

In Head Start the students learn a lot of things their parents aren’t teaching them, or aren’t able to teach them, such as numbers, letters, directions and English, Blackburn said.  The program isn’t open to everyone.  Getting in can be a challenge for some parents.

“Sometimes we have families who will try anything to get into the program,” Blackburn said referring to Head Start.  “We do give additional points to English-language learners.”

That decision does draw some controversy in the community, Blackburn noted.  Parents must meet a number of qualifications in order for their child to be considered.  Location, age and income level are the three most important federally mandated qualifications a family must meet.

“You don’t have to be legal citizens to participate.  The goal is to severe as many children as possible and most of the children on the waiting list are Spanish speaking students,” Blackburn said.

Click here to listen to Blackburn talk more about the application process

Bensley Elementary, along with Falling Creek Elementary and Chalkley Elementary have the largest Hispanic populations in the county, Blackburn noted.  That’s where Head Start focuses most of its resources.  Families in Chesterfield’s Bon Air and Midlothian areas aren’t offered Head Start services, mostly because of location.  Blackburn said that’s because those parts of the county are more affluent than other parts of Chesterfield.

“We try to serve the neediest families,” Blackburn said. “We try to work together as a school system to support these families in anyway we can.”

Most of the Hispanic community finds out about the program and application process through word of mouth, Blackburn answered.  In addition to public service announcements, a family service team goes to area apartment complexes seeking out children who may need a head start before kindergarten.  Some say the program is part of the reason for the county’s growing Hispanic population. The census reports that 5.4 percent of the population in 2007 was Hispanic.

“They [parents] want them to learn English and it’s really a hard balance to get them to learn a language at such a young age,” Blackburn said.

Back in Todd’s classroom, it is evident that her students are bilingual.  It is not noticeable when she’s talking to the children, or even when they’re talking with each other. But it is very visual by glancing around the room at all of the labels attached to everything, from tables and chairs, to toys and appliances.

“We label everything with a picture and the English and Spanish word,” Todd said.

Like many of Chesterfield’s teachers, Todd points out that she doesn’t speak Spanish, and she’s not the only adult in the classroom who sometimes is left questioning what the children need.  Todd has an assistant, as do all other Head Start teachers in the county.  Blackburn notes that it’s common for neither one of the instructors to know Spanish.

“The hardest part is when they’re sad and you can’t figure out what’s wrong,” Todd said.

“At this age we use a lot of sign language, pointing at things,” Debra Patterson, Todd’s assistant, said.

The kids don’t seem to mind though. Although they speak a different language and come from different backgrounds, they play as if there is nothing different about them at all.

“You don’t always have to be verbal to play with someone,” Blackburn said.  “That’s part of our program, to teach them social skills.”

Click here to listen to Blackburn talk more about how the children interact

And it’s not always like Todd is alone, Blackburn pointed out.  There are, of course, Spanish speakers in the classroom who can help out.

“We have some children who will translate for each other.  Some speak both languages and will translate for friends or even their teachers,” Blackburn said.

Since Chesterfield has more Spanish speaking children than Henrico, Hanover and Richmond, Blackburn noted, it also means there are more Spanish speaking parents who cannot communicate with the school system.  It’s a challenge that a lot of people have to face, especially the teacher.  That’s why, Blackburn said, the school system has worked to address the issue.

“There is a relationship building process that starts way before the children even get to the school,” Blackburn said.

When a child is chosen for the Head Start program the teacher will begin home visits months in advance.  Several Spanish-speaking staff members are available who can help, but just getting to know one another is a learning process for both the teacher and the family.

“It’s really a give and take sort of thing,” Blackburn said referring to the teacher-parent relationship.  “They [parents] speak enough English to get by, but they’re really reluctant to try to learn a new language.”

Click here to listen to Blackburn talk about how the school system interacts with parents who don’t speak English

That is why the school system tries to take the initiative to reach out to these families while they can, Franson noted.  It has partnered with the county’s Tech Center to get parents involved and to get them to take English classes.

“It’s a lot easier to teach a 4-year-old English than it is a 40-year-old,” Blackburn noted.

They also try to teach them about the American culture, Franson said.  County-sponsored workshops on culture issues are made available for these parents to attend.  Some of the families have been in the United States only a short time.  Parents do not always know what to do to provide their child with the best opportunity for an education.

“We struggle a little bit with families thinking we’re just a drop off babysitting service,” Blackburn said.  “So we’ve had to work hard with parents this year and teach them attendance is really important.”

But parents are not the only ones being schooled, Blackburn noted.  The professionals who work with ESOL students are also continually updating their skills.  Despite facing budget problems and rapid enrollment rates, they are still finding the time and the money to help the program grow and become more successful.

“In the last several years funding has been very tight.  We have just recently received additional funding to do some quality improvement sorts of things that we might put toward working with our Spanish speaking population and parent education,” Blackburn said.

Educators also struggle with the basics of just teaching the children more than just English, Franson emphasized. The hardest part sometimes is not communicating, but being able to prepare students for the Standards of Learning exams by the end of the school year.  But teachers are seeing success.  While there are no statistics available about how well ESOL students are doing after graduation, their teachers said they are going on to higher education including trade schools, two-and four-year colleges.

In Todd’s Head Start class, the students still have a long way to go before graduation.  Eventually, Frason said, most of the students will only need to be monitored by ESOL instructors, because they can catch on so quickly by entering the county’s program at such a young age.  It is why some families, according to Franson, are moving to Chesterfield.

“We have a very favorable view [reputation] in the community.”

More Information:

Official Head Start Website

Chesterfield County Public Schools ESOL

Virginia Department of Social Services

Click the photo to watch a slide show about the Holocaust Remembrance Day March on VCU's campus.

By Leron Barkley
barkleyll[@]vcu.edu

RICHMOND–In the slide show audio clip, Jonathan Bridge talks about his fraternity and how they received the idea to do a march on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Bridge is apart of the Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity at Virginia Commonwealth University. He said his fraternity attended a conference in North Carolina and learned some fraternities across the nation conduct a march every year on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Bridge said three other fraternities took part in the march organized by his fraternity on April 21.

“The march by the fraternity was to bring light to an issue that is significant in world history and in Jewish history, said Richmond Hillel Director KB Levin. “There is no history month dedicated to Jewish people so people need to be aware of this day and that is what the march helped do.”

Click the photo to see a historical time line of events dealing with the Jewish community and Israel.

Hillel is The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life. The foundation provides opportunities for students at more than 500 colleges and universities. Levin works with the University of Richmond and the T. C. Williams School of Law and both the Monroe Park and medical VCU campuses.

This was the first year for the march on the VCU Campus, but he is planning for the march next year to continue to make an impact on the VCU community. “This was my first time planning anything, hopefully next year we are able to get into some classrooms and it won’t rain so people will be outside,” said Bridge.

Bridge said the march was held late in the day to bring sort of a somber mood to the march. “The setting helped out what we are trying to express,” said Bridge.

Bridge said as long as the silent march had an impact on one person then he felt as if a difference was made. The group marched in a single line to help draw attention. Their purpose was to remain silent and distribute information about the Holocaust. The group put on black to contrast their white signs, plus Bridge said black is closely represented with mourning.

The group walked in various buildings around VCU Campus including the student center, the library, the cafeteria and education building. Bridge is a freshman at VCU majoring in physical and health education. He joined the fraternity in the fall semester and his current position on the executive board is in a member at large position that serves as a liaison between members in the fraternity and the executive board.

Holocaust Remembrance Day or Yom HaShoah in Hebrew is an internationally recognized date to remember the six million Jewish people that were mass murdered during the Second World War. There were also 13 million people that were murdered at this time from different backgrounds. Each year The Remembrance Day starts at sunset, which is actually the day before the official recognition date. The day corresponds with the 27th day of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar, which is the first month on the Jewish calendar. The first Remembrance Day took place in 1951.

Click the photo to watch a video about the Israel Independence Day Celebration at the Weinstein Jewish Community Center in Richmond, Va.

How It Began – Virginia’s Holocaust Museum

Click the photo to watch a slide show about the Virginia Holocaust Museum.

By Michael J. Jones
jonesmj3[@]vcu.edu

RICHMOND — April was a very important month for the American Jewish Population. On April 21st the 58th Holocaust Remembrance Day and if one was to visit Richmond’s Holocaust Museum it would be a hard even to forget.

Jay M. Ipson is one of the founders of Richmond, Virginia’s Holocaust Museum in 1997 which is located on East Cary Street. Ipson is also Richmond’s youngest survivor of the Holocaust. In an article written by Dionne Waugh of Richmond.com, Ipson told her what it was like to be a child during the Holocaust time period. Ipson said “I was 6 years old. When we moved into the ghetto, the house that we moved into was with my grandparents. So I did not feel the transition from outside to inside the ghetto. A lot of people had a transition. Of course, we lost all our furniture, all our belongings. I lost my favorite coat because it was taken away from me. I had a fur coat that was embroidered real fancy on the outside. The fur was on the inside. I had to give it up. The Germans took that away from me, but materials lost didn’t mean anything to me be because the whole family was as a unit.” However the he and his mother were the only ones to make it through the holocaust. The rest of his family either died in concentration camps or in the gas chambers.

At first Ipson didn’t want to start a Holocaust Museum. He felt that if he started it other Holocaust survivors in Virginia might resent it and think that they should’ve been the ones to start it themselves. Another reason was that there was already a national museum in Washington D.C. When asked about his feelings at the time about starting a museum in Richmond, Ipson said “Richmond doesn’t need it. We got one of the finest in Washington (DC). It’s a national museum and we don’t need it.” However he took a trip to Washington D.C. and they tried to persuade him to build one in Richmond. Ipson said that the National Holocaust Museum said that they would give him the authentic train tracks that thousands of Jews were transported on when they were on their way to the gas chambers. They also said that they would give him the cobblestones from the Warsaw Ghetto which was one of the largest Jewish ghettos in World War II. They were also the same cobblestones that the Battle for Warsaw took place on. Ipson said, “That’s all they had to say. To me those are irreplaceable artifacts that will last generations.”

The museum added a new exhibit in May 2008 that was a life-like replica of The Nuremberg Trials Courtroom. The museum also includes exhibits on the gas chambers, how they cremated those Jews who died in the gas chambers, the concentration camp sleeping quarters, and many other things that visually represent what it was like for Jews and other prisoners during the Holocaust. The museum’s goal is shown on a sign that is visible when you enter and exit the museum. It says, “Think about what you saw” and after viewing their exhibits and completing one of the tours given by one of the youngest survivors of the Holocaust, you will do just that.

Click the photo to view the entire Jewish community Web site produced by Leron Barkley and Michael Jones.

This is a Google Map of Jewish resources in the Richmond, Va., community.

It’s early Tuesday morning and sunlight pours through the skylight window of the Hue Quang Buddhist temple on Hungary Road, creating a beatific glow around a large, chalk-white statue of Buddha that sits at the head of the room, surrounded by floral arrangements, bowls of oranges, and burning incense.

A group of around 60 boys from a fifth grade history class at Collegiate School sit shoeless on the rug, listening to a Vietnamese man, Hoang Tran, dressed in a plain grey work shirt who kneels in front of the altar.

“What are the things that most concern you in your lives?” asks Tran, a temple member and former refugee who immigrated here in 1984.

“Schoolwork … grades … global warming,” come the answers. One boy raises his hand and replies: “Tuition?”

Tran smiles and launches into a beginner’s definition of Buddhism, the ancient religion centered on meditation and acts of compassion for the self and others. He explains that Buddhism encourages its adherents to “explore their feelings” and “be less selfish,” as well as to live by a daily set of guidelines known as the five precepts, which correspond in ways to the Ten Commandments: Do not kill or hurt anyone (including animals), do not steal, do not commit adultery, do not lie, and do not be intoxicated.

“Following these precepts will help purify you from within,” says Tran, who mesmerizes the kids with stories of his past as a refugee in an Indonesian camp, where he and other poor Vietnamese were given only 16 ounces of water to live on a day. He came to this country without even owning a pair of long pants, he says.

“Do not waste or take anything for granted,” Tran says, before leading the class through a meditative chant in English (“let me be free from mental suffering”) punctuated by the deep, lingering tones of a single gong being struck.

The only time the boys look disinterested is later, when Thi Keller, a woman who teaches Vietnamese language at a small, separate house located along the driveway, asks them to help her sing a song in honor of Mother’s Day.

“Dear mom, let me tell you how I feel,” she begins singing in slightly broken English. “You have given me such a pleasure, I love you so.”

The boys begrudgingly repeat after her, fidgeting and casting sidelong glances at each other.

Collegiate teacher Laurie Shadowen says the school has been sending students on field trips to the Hue Quang temple for the past five years. The temple, which is considered part of the Richmond Buddhist Association, serves mostly local Vietnamese-Americans, about 75 percent, with the other quarter comprised of Chinese members and a few Americans.

“They get the visual of what we’ve been learning in class,“ says Shadowen. “So many of [our students] are Christian, I think they appreciate the comparison to the Ten Commandments. They can see that the Buddhist religion, compassion and helping others, is an everyday philosophy—it’s not just going to church on Sundays.”

Indeed, the history of Buddhism is one of daily practices handed down through the generations. Its origins date back to 580 B.C. with the birth of Buddha Siddhartha Guatama in Southern Nepal. Today, the religion has millions of followers around the world and has slowly increased its numbers in America, although it still accounts for only .7 percent of the religious make-up for the US adult population. The first Buddhist temple was built in San Francisco in 1853, on the heels of the Gold Rush when the Chinese began moving to the country in increasingly larger numbers.

Click here to see "Buddhism in Vietnam" timeline.

According to the 2009 Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, Buddhism in the United States today is mostly comprised of native-born adherents, whites and converts; with “only one-in-three American Buddhists describing their race as Asian, while nearly three-in-four Buddhists say they are converts to Buddhism”—an impressive statistic considering most Buddhists are opposed to converting anyone to their religion.

“It’s a personal decision that everyone must come to individually, even within the different families,” says Tin Nguyen, director for the temple’s Buddhist youth association, which caters to kids between the ages of 7 and 14. Nguyen compares his youth group to the traditional Boy Scouts, teaching survival skills and fun activity games with the Buddhist approach of mindfulness. The outreach activities for this temple are few, however.

“Only if people request a program, do we come to them,” says Tran.

Henrico High School student Alina Nguyen has been a practicing Buddhist since she was six. Her parents were heavily involved with the Hue Quang temple, but did not force her to join. For her, the religion provides a strong sense of personal responsibility.

“It’s not like I’m believing in Buddha helping me,” she says. “He’s giving me guidelines to make choices. But it’s all about how I’m dealing with my life.”

To understand the history of The Richmond Buddhist Association, and Buddhism in Richmond in general, one must look back to the Ekoji Buddhist Sangha group, the city’s first Buddhist organization. The group was founded in 1986 by the Rev. Kenryu Takashi Tsuji, a Canadian who studied Buddhism in Japan. Tsuji started the Ekoji group at a house located in the Museum District of The Fan at 3411 Grove Avenue, where it still operates today. He wanted the building to serve as a place of worship for multiple Buddhist sects and invited members of the local Vietnamese community to worship upstairs. They did so for three years before raising enough money to buy land and start their own temple—the Hue Quang, which means “radiate wisdom.”

Hue Quang opened in 2003 and is the only structure in the Richmond metro area built solely as a Buddhist place of worship. Emulating the ornate, traditional architecture of a Vietnamese temple, it operates on donations from its roughly 300 members, as well as holding vegetarian food fundraisers the first Sundays of every month.

Weekly services are structured similarly to Christian services—with chanting and songs, as well as a central sermon delivered in Vietnamese. It’s a welcoming, nature-oriented atmosphere. Visitors must remove their shoes and there are several blooming Bodhi trees (a fig tree sacred in the Buddhist religion) in back of the room. Everything, especially the deep tones of the gong, is geared towards helping people relax and focus on their inner selves. Members are given a nicknames by the volunteer monks once they have the joined the temple and agreed to follow the five precepts, or however many they can.

Hue Quang is Richmond's first Buddhist Temple. Click here to see an audio slideshow about the temple and Buddhist worship.

“A lot of times, people will come here to get away from society, just for peacefulness” says Tuyet Nguyen, a former Virginia Commonwealth University business graduate who helps out with the local youth days.

Keller has been a member for eight years and not only directs the Vietnamese language school, but also helps the monks set up major annual events such as Buddha Birthday and Chinese New Years. She also helps assist any members, particularly the older ones, who might need help with paperwork for jobs or medical issues.

“There are a lot of older Vietnamese-speaking people who need to get together,” she says. “Here, we calm down our minds and it helps us relax more.”

The temple also serves another vital function in the community. When a family member or loved one dies, members will come pray once a week for seven weeks, often wearing a customary white headband. The idea behind this is to spiritually help the departed loved one through the death transformation so they can find the right path in the afterlife, Tran explains. At Hue Quang, this is usually done in a backroom kitchen equipped with a small alter, above which are hundreds of small framed photos of the faces of the deceased. The moving effect of the tiny prayer area is at once personal and universal.

At least ten different lineages of Buddhism groups practice in Richmond and the surrounding areas, and most hold some unofficial tie to the original Ekoji worship group. Yet none have become adversarial rivals upon splitting from the main group, and indeed many still have unofficial, personal connections between them. Most of the groups are split along ethnic lines, such as Southeast Asian (Cambodian, Vietnamese) or European—as well as by style of practice.

“Many are very similar. But it’s more like the way Christians may choose a different pastor or worship place based on its location or their friends and families,” explains Tin Nguyen.

Among the main stylistic differences between Buddhism groups are whether they focus on chanting, meditation, or applying the principles to society.

Hoang Tran explains that there are basically two schools of Buddhism practiced among the Vietnamese in Richmond. There is the northern sect, focusing on chanting (such as Hue Quang) and the southern sect, which focuses more on meditation. Most of the local Vietnamese community, one of the largest Asian groups in Richmond, is religiously split between Catholicism and Buddhism.

The Richmond Buddhist Association has already had one group break away several years ago from the Hue Quang temple to form its own group, the Vien Giac temple.

“We always try to find common ground,” says Tran. “But we have different ideas of how things should be run. So there are different temples for those who wish to follow different monks or schools.”

Currently, there is no official monk or leader of the Hue Quang temple, and a reporter gets the feeling that much of the group is decentralized, with members not taking official titles other than volunteer. Everyone chips in to do whatever he or she can.

Tran says that American converts to Buddhism tend to be drawn toward meditation. In the future, we could see even more Richmonders practicing Buddhism as Tran notes that he is currently spending part of his time with the construction of a new center, the Saddhamma Citta Meditation Center, in Louisa County. The person who will be running that center is a well-known Buddhist monk along the East Coast, Tran says, and is affiliated with large meditation centers in California and Washington, D.C.

The site, located at 574 Willow Brook Road, is under construction and money is still being raised for its completion.

Click here for extended interviews and more multimedia.

(Richmond, VA)-Wilken Fernandez and his wife and daughter left Cuba nearly 12 years ago in hopes of finding a better life in Virginia. A graduate of the University of Havana in 1984, Fernandez was trained as a professional economist and worked for just over a decade as a budget director and manager for a biotechnology center in Havana.

“When I left the country, it was a mess,” he recalls. “Most of those living there were simply maneuvered for the government.”

Today, Fernandez works as an interpreter/translator for the Hispanic Liaison Office in downtown Richmond, hoping he can one day return to his chosen profession as an economist. He says his lack of experience working in the United States, as well as the language barrier, kept him from getting a job as an economist here.

“It doesn’t make any sense, you’re suppose to be more qualified because you have more experience in other countries,” he says with a laugh. “I have experience with U.S. companies. I know how you guys work here.”

Regardless of his situation, Fernandez says he is happy. He used to travel for his job in Cuba, which is how he came to know Virginia and choose it as his new home. More importantly, he says he wanted real opportunities to grow and make a better life for his family. Among the restrictions he experienced growing up: No travel, no freedom of speech, no free elections, always one party in power.

“You have to live in one of these countries where you cannot express yourself to understand how happy you are to be out of that system. I don’t know how to say it in English,” he says. “Astonishment?”

Lately, Fernandez has been keeping a close eye on the ongoing diplomatic maneuvers between the United States and Cuba. In April, President Obama lifted restrictions on travel and remittances for Cuban-Americans and opened the door to telecommunications with the island.

“I think these first steps are important to provide information for the Cuban people,” Fernandez says. “Information is key. They’re going to have to decide if they want to continue supporting the dictatorship.”

Fernandez has yet to return to Cuba, the island country with a population of nearly 12 million where the average person lives off $20 a day. But he says that things have only gotten worse since he left. As a professional economist and a recently designated U.S. citizen, he believes that the embargo imposed by the United States since 1962 has not worked.

“It’s been used as a weapon for the Cuban government to manage the people against the United States,” he says. “If we start thinking about politics with Cuba and thinking of it as a market, that’s going to help democracy in Cuba. The political power is always behind the economic power.”

After Obama’s initial overture, Cuban President Raul Castro replied as if he would be open to discussing the deep ideological differences between the capitalist United States and socialist Cuba, a government which many observers point out still has political prisoners in jail.

But the initial feelings of goodwill from Cuba have since swayed back to the hardline stance of Raul’s brother, the still powerful and influential Fidel Castro. Although elderly and ailing, the father of the Cuban Revolution remains defiant, a staunch critic of the “imperial” U.S. government. During a meeting of the Coordination Bureau of the Non-Aligned Movement in Havana on April 29, the Associated Press reported “[Raul] Castro dismissed Barack Obama’s policy changes toward Cuba as minimal and said it is up to the United States – not Cuba – to do more to improve relations.”

Dulce Lawrence, director of the University of Richmond’s Latin American and Iberian Studies department’s outreach program, was part of the first movement of professionals and wealthier Cubans who left in the early 1960s. She was only 20 when she arrived here.

“I came with four changes of clothes and no money because that’s all they let me take when I left,” she says. The rest of her immediate family came in the 1970s, but she still has some friends that live in Cuba today. The situation hasn’t changed much since Raul took over, she says, and the economy is even worse.

“Politically, we need to try something different, the embargo hasn’t worked,” she says. “I think change is going to be a lot slower than people think, because they don’t want to give up power … and nobody has arms or can protest.”

Lawrence points out that opening tourism in Cuba would only give more money to the government, since local Cubans are not allowed to frequent tourist spots. The country’s infrastructure is in extreme disrepair, and the people there don’t have money to buy many American products anyway, she says.

“We have tried changes before and nothing has worked,” she says. “The people don’t rebel because any kind of protest and people end up in jail, or they take your food away, or you won’t be able to get jobs, because the only jobs are in government.”

Maricel Quintana-Baker, associate director for academic affairs for the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, is in her late ‘50s and came to this country while still a teenager. Her parents, which could afford to send her and her siblings to this country, did so in fear that the Castro regime was going to start Communist indoctrination programs for Cuban youth, as had happened in China. Her parents were able to procure student visas for their kids through the Catholic Church, which had a program in the early ‘60s, Operation Peter Pan, that helped bring over 14,000 kids to Miami. Her family did not use the program, but followed the model anyway. She eventually came to stay with an uncle living in Miami.

Quintana-Baker was fortunate. She had an older brother, who was a successful medical student in Rhode Island, who got her into a Catholic boarding school and basically served the role of her father. The pair eventually moved to Maryland after her brother got a fellowship in cardiology at George Washington University.

It all goes to show how much teamwork and individual effort it takes for immigrants to assimilate and succeed in this country. Quintana-Baker says that she is proud of the Cuban people because of their strong work ethic, and the way that they have assimilated into the professional class and earned a high standard of living and education in this country. Many have became successful doctors, lawyers, professors, and academics.

“We are the model immigrants because we worked our buns off,” she says bluntly, touting their high socio-economic profile. “As Cubans, we don’t let the dust settle beneath our feet.”

As far as the ongoing political discussion between the countries, Quintana-Baker agrees that the U.S. tactics of the past have not worked.

“I’m game for trying something else,” she says. “What I object to is when politicians go down to the island and say everything is dandy. Who are they kidding?”

Conditions there are still horrible, as she illustrates with several examples of modern life in Cuba. If someone comes to visit your house, you are responsible for walking over to the block captain and telling him the details about your visitor. If the food on your ration card is not enough to feed your family, and the government catches people buying food under the table off the black market, then you are in trouble. The island itself is a prison, she says, from which the Cuban people cannot escape.

“Most Americans either don’t want to hear it, are totally ignorant, or don’t give a damn,” she says. “It’s OK for Verizon to provide access to cell phones, but when the cell phone costs as much as you can make in several months, what’s the use of having it?”

Cell phones, Internet, and other ways to open communication and democracy have to be provided to the people through other means than the government, she says.

“The government has to stop stealing revenues, all of those people at the top of the government are filthy rich,” she adds.

While some in the media point out that current Cuban President Raul Castro seems more open to economic development, Quintana-Baker feels that he is more likely to grow in line with the Chinese model of government.

“He likes a certain amount of economic freedom, but also keeping control of the ideology, and an iron hand on the brain or ideas,” she explains. “He has been the one since the beginning of the Revolution who has exercised military control and conducted executions: The little Hitler.”

One group of Virginians that is also pushing for economic change in Cuba, albeit at a faster rate, is the business community—particularly those involved with agriculture, Virginia’s number one industry. Since the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act of 2000 (TSRA), which authorized the sale of agricultural commodities, medicine and medical devices directly from the United States to Cuba, the island nation has also become a major market for products from Virginia such as apples, soybeans, soybean meal, and pork.

Todd P. Haymore, the state’s commissioner of agriculture and consumer services, has made several trade trips to Cuba. He considers the country one of his most important strategic priorities since he took the job over 20 months ago; his ultimate goal being to diversify the portfolio of countries with which Virginia does business.

“[Cuba] is something that I’m really, really pushing hard, ” he says. “I believe that there’s additional opportunities for our poultry, meat products, lumber, as well as our specialized, sweet Virginia wine.”

Virginia currently ranks in the top six states exporting to Cuba. Its agricultural exports to Cuba have increased somewhat dramatically, from $838,000 in 2003 (the first year in which agricultural exports from the Commonwealth to Cuba occurred since the trade embargo began in 1962) to more than $40 million in 2008.

Haymore says the Cuban officials he has met with seem interested in maintaining a dialogue and increasing trade between Virginia and the country. According to state officials, the United States ships over $400 million dollars of agricultural products to Cuba, making it one of the most important food suppliers for the island.

But there are still impediments in the export process, Haymore points out. One challenge to increasing Virginia’s agricultural sales to Cuba is that the TSRA provides that agricultural products may be exported to Cuba “as long as they are paid for through a letter of credit from a third country financial institution or by payment of cash in advance.” In 2005, the Treasury Department ruled that US agricultural and medical exports to Cuba that are paid by the “cash in advance” method must be paid for in cash before the goods leave the country, not just before the goods are physically in the possession of the Cuban buyer.

“Agricultural products are perishable items,” Haymore says. “Anything could happen to that product [on a ship] between Virginia and Havana.”

Click here for a podcast of Mr. Haymore discussing the export challenges in detail.

Generally speaking, Haymore believes that the full potential of this market will not be realized until the current trading relationship is improved by addressing the trade and travel restrictions.

“Virginia’s geographic proximity to Cuba, combined with the Commonwealth’s agricultural quality and diversity and our outstanding port facilities will provide Virginia with a competitive advantage as trade barriers are lowered,” he says.

Anytime politics between countries improves, it’s likely that business opportunities will soon follow, according to Stephanie Tignor, global research manager for the international division of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. The VEDP is a state authority created to promote economic expansion within the Commonwealth of Virginia (“Unfortunately, a lot of businesses still don’t know we exist,” Tignor says).

A lot of the clients that Tignor deals with are newer exporters, she says, and many would be “freaked out” by dealing with Cuba.

“Even if trade is allowed to open a bit more, Cuba is still going to be a fairly closed market because of Communism,” Tignor explains. “One can only hope that incrementally, these things will improve.”

But the apple growers of Virginia are not freaked out. Huff Chiles, general manager of Crown Orchard in Batesville, VA, says that selling apples to Cuba is a vital part of his family business that has been developing for years.

“There’s certainly a lot of paperwork and documentation that goes along with it, but it’s do-able,” Chiles says. “We’d love to be able to sell all the apples we grow right here close to where we live, but it just doesn’t work that way.”

According to the World Trade Atlas, provided by Global Trade Information Services, exports to Cuba from Virginia have seen across the board dollar increases in the years since 2006. Grain, fruit and seeds jumped over 80 percent from 2007 to 2008, while the dollar amount of exported meat has jumped over two thousand percent in the same period.

State statistics show that Virginia did $2.2 billion dollars of total agricultural exports last year, up from $1.7 billion in 2007—so $40 million dollars to Cuba may seem like a small drop in the bucket, but Haymore doesn’t see things that way.

“Tell a Virginia farmer, it’s not small potatoes for anybody,” Haymore adds. “One person’s drop in the bucket is another person’s lifeblood.”

One of the most visible Cuban-Americans in Richmond is Manny Mendez, the bear of a man with long, frizzy gray hair who co-owns Kuba Kuba, an authentic Cuban restaurant located in the heart of The Fan district.

Click on the photo for a slideshow featuring Manny Mendez, co-owner of Kuba Kuba restaurant in the heart of The Fan district.

Mendez, 46, came to this country when he was only six years old. A self-described liberal, he says that he is often jokingly accused by friends of being a Communist because he wants an open market in the Western Hemisphere similar to the European Union.

“I’m not pro-Fidel at all, the man is an evil person who has killed thousands of people,” he says. “Yet we give aid to other countries, other guys that are also monsters … But Cuba pissed us off in our own backyard.”

Mendez would love seeing the United States send more everyday items such as toilet paper, pencils, soap and cooking oil, that might help improve the lives of the Cuban people. He noticed how poor conditions had gotten when he returned for his grandmother’s funeral several years ago.

Mendez says that many Cuban-Americans come to his restaurant and the political discussion usually breaks down based on age or generational differences—with anyone older than him being completely anti-Castro and unwilling to give an inch. Many of those who read Spanish still get their news from the daily Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban regime, which Mendez calls the “Fox news for the Communists.”

There used to be a local meeting group called the Richmond Cuban Club, but all of those members have grown older and Mendez thinks there are only around 90 families left in the area.

After talking with many Cuban-Americans in Richmond, few seem to share a nostalgic longing to return to their homeland, admittedly still a beautiful country with a friendly populace and rich cultural traditions.

Wilken Fernandez’ extended family still resides in Cuba, and that is essentially what he misses most, he says. He doesn’t have bad memories of his youth growing up in a Communist country—noting that development of his political ideas came later. He does think that the younger generations today are ready for change, and that the more the Internet opens up, the more democracy will thrive. Fernandez has no plans on returning to live in Cuba, even though he has dual citizenship. He has already moved his sister and other members of his family to the United States.

“I wouldn’t mind going to Cuba to do business though,” he says.

As Haymore notes, the fact that Virginia has been increasing its exports to Cuba is a good indication that countries can do productive business together.

Quintana-Baker has not been back to her country since she immigrated some 40 years ago, and she is not hopeful for quick change on the island. More ominously, she worries there may be bloodshed required in the future for real change to occur.

“Tiananmen Square can happen anywhere,” she says.

Click here to take the poll: Do you think the United States should end the embargo?

Richmond, Va — Many people find comfort in knowing that should they ever become ill, medical help would be readily available. Whether in a doctor’s office or emergency room, people seek help everyday for small to major problems.

Now imagine you need medical help immediately. Upon arriving at a local emergency room, you discover that no one can understand your words and no one seems able to help. You are a Spanish-speaking individual with limited proficiency in the English language.

This was indeed the case at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center between 2006 and 2007. During that time, 25,038 non-English speaking individuals sought medical care at VCU Medical Center.

Fortunately, VCU Medical Center has programs in place to accurately assist patients whose first language is something other than English.

The first of these programs is a telephone system operated by Cyracom. Cyracom is a transparent language service that allows hospitals and doctors’ offices to utilize a three-phone system to provide interpretation.

“We are very fortunate to have access to a full host of services so that we can ensure we are communicating effectively with our families,” said

Sharon Cone, nursing manager of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at VCU Medical Center. “Through a translator, we are able to sit right next to a family and express joy or perhaps a concern and find out what questions they have.”

A doctor or a nurse speaks into one phone to an operator who then interprets the message for the non-English speaking listener on the second phone. In turn, messages also are transposed from the patient to the doctor or nurse.

During the 2006 and 2007 fiscal year, VCU Medical Center’s used Cyracom heavily. Over 91 percent of calls involved Spanish interpretation.

Arabic interpretation, the next highest volume of calls, accounted for 2.4 percent. Korean, Vietnamese, and Mixteco were the next three most prevalent languages, each accounting for 1 percent of the calls to Cyracom.

“Our phone services allow us 47 different languages,” Cone said. “Despite the language barrier, sitting right next to the families and watching their expressions allows us to interact with the family. It’s definitely an added benefit in any hospital arena.”

Click here to listen to Sharon Cone talk about Cyracom

The second service VCU Medical Center offers is face to face interpreter service.

Click here to watch and Audio Slideshow about why people want to be interpreters.

“Anyone who self-identifies as being bi-lingual is required to take a language assessment test before joining our interpreter program,” said Vilma Seymour, program manager for language services at VCU Medical center.

After taking the initial language assessment, individuals then complete a 40-hour course in interpretation services before being allowed to perform any interpretation service for VCU Medical Center.

Current translators also continue to keep their language skills up to date by meeting bi-weekly to practice skills and study various languages.

Serving as an invisible voice, these interpreters accompany medical professionals to meetings with patients.

“The goal for any interpreting class is for them to be able to know the boundaries, expectations, and responsibilities,” Seymour said. “We hope that they can know the do’s and don’ts and learn how much more training they need to better serve our patients.”

Click here for stories about Richmond’s Refugee and Immigration Services.

The End of Overseas Reporting by Local Journalist?

Click here to explore the challenges and rewards of three local journalist who worked as embedded reporters.