Sui Ngun Hei, an 18-year-old freshman at Howard Community College, was recently recognized by FIRN for her efforts to assist fellow Burmese refugees. Here, Hei works with Bollman Bridge Elementary kindergartners, from left, Fili Na, Zing Hlei and Mercy Famduring a Dec. 1 session of Club Leap, an after-school tutoring program for non-native English speakers. (Staff photo by Nicole Martyn)
Nearly 400 Burmese refugees are carving out an existence in southern Howard County, thanks in part to an unlikely hero.
Though many of these immigrants arrived in Savage from their war-torn homeland in southeast Asia several years ago, the non-English speaking people among them still rely on quiet teenager Sui Ngun Hei.
Ngun Hei, who fled Burma in 2003, has taken it upon herself to act as a community liaison to those refugees who only speak the Chin dialect. She has accompanied them to doctor appointments, classes, trips to social services agencies and the like since she moved with her family to Savage two years ago.
“Sui is an incredible young person who is very humble about her role in these people’s lives,” said Catherine Hester of FIRN, a Columbia-based nonprofit organization that provides resources for the foreign born.
Hester invited the 18-year-old to speak about the Chin community at FIRN’s International Gala last month because of the teen’s unselfish commitment to assisting them.
“Many of these refugees are still in survival mode, struggling to make ends meet,” Hester said, adding they have an ongoing need for such basic items as clothing and furniture.
Since 2006, 225 Burmese refugees have resettled in Howard County, according to data from the International Rescue Committee’s Baltimore office. During the current fiscal year, which will end Sept. 30, 2010, the U.S. government proposes to resettle 80,000 refugees from all nations in states across the country, according to IRC statistics.
Having taught herself to speak English, Ngun Hei said she chose to take on the jobs of interpreter, translator and navigator simply because she is “happy to help.”
“Sui has really blossomed in her role as a community liaison and she is so self-motivated,” said Hester, who became a naturalized American citizen after her parents emigrated from Taiwan.
Not only does the teen assist the older generation, she works with 33 Chin children who belong to a FIRN reading group at Bollman Bridge Elementary School, in Jessup, called Club Leap. The club, which is run by Hester, works with 105 kids in 10 county schools.
Ngun Hei knows firsthand about the conditions in Burma, which is called Myanmar by the government and has been ruled by a military junta for many decades. She described how her father, a farmer, was taken to a non-government-run refugee camp in Malaysia in 1998 when she was only 7. Her mother was left to take care of their six children.
“Later, (the government) confiscated our land and we had no food for a year,” she recalled.
Fleeing a military coup in Burma, her family was reunited in Malaysia in 2003 and lived in the refugee camp for two years, sleeping in beds that often were wet as a result of leaks in their tiny apartment’s roof.
When they first arrived in America in 2005, Ngun Hei and her family lived in Baltimore County for two years. They then moved to Savage to join the other refugees already resettled there and to enroll in the county’s top-rated school system, she said.
“When we lived in the refugee camp, my five brothers and I had no formal schooling,” she lamented. But that, as it turned out, wasn’t an obstacle to her success.
Though she had only completed fifth grade in Burma, she was placed in ninth-grade classes in Baltimore County and excelled. After her family’s move to Howard County, Ngun Hei graduated with honors from Hammond High School in May and is currently a pre-med student at Howard Community College, in Columbia. She also works 20 hours a week at her two jobs.
“Sui is a model citizen, not just a model immigrant,” Hester said. “She has become a natural spokesperson and a strong leader.”
Source: Columbia Flier
By Janene Holzberg
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