On July 4th, 2003 Shamsa Hussein and her father first touched U.S. soil as refugees from Somalia. Shamsa was 16 years old, did not speak a word of English and had never been to school. Yet just 3 years later she has graduated from Marshall High School with 15 college credits completed.
Shamsa was determined to succeed and she took advantage of most of what IRCO had to offer: she took English classes, youth services case management, family services, health education classes, job training, and employment services. Now, six years after arriving in the U.S. she speaks English beautifully and articulately.
Working full time, Shamsa has learned to stretch a day. She works full time at IRCO while taking 16 credits at Portland State University towards degree’s in social work and public health. In her spare time she takes occasional interpretation jobs from IRCO’s International Language Bank, volunteers at IRCO’s Africa House and helps people in the Somali community with interpretation, filling out housing forms and doing grocery shopping. That’s all in addition to being the caregiver for her diabetic father.
With ten siblings and a mother still living in Kenya, Shamsa finds herself spending much of her pay check just keeping them afloat, “$200 U.S. can help a whole family of 12 over there, so I am happy to do it, but it is a lot” she says. Shamsa has just received her American citizenship and is planning a trip to her birth town Qoryoley, Somalia this summer. Taking a few friends and a PSU film student along, Shamsa plans on documenting the prevalence of orphaned children with no resources in the town, “What I hear of now, there are more children without parents there than with parents” Shamsa says. An apartment has been made available for them to use, and her first order of business is to get children off the streets, “clothes, an education…having a place to sleep, food cooking, this means so much to me” says Shamsa. With such a wealth of personal strength and perseverance, there is no doubt that Shamsa will continue to change lives.
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