 Assalamu alaikum my name is Naseer Zakaria I'm the founder of Executive Director of Rohingya Culture Center. I would like to thank you so much for organizing this event and we are from Rohingya and the Rohingya is one of the minority in Burma and I would like to share Abdul Jabbar he want to share the history of Rohingya so I will pass to him. Assalamu alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. It's been a honor to be here and thank you very much for having us. So I just want to share about who are the Rohingya and what is the situation right now the Rohingya situation. Rohingya are in Arkansas is a 400 AD and then we the Burma got independent in 1947 and then in 1962 the military took power. Since 1962 the start of the discrimination and persecution started since 1962 and and then in 2012 the officially genocide started. In 1987 1982 there is a citizenship law that is excluded the Rohingya as ethnic group in Burma and also confiscated our citizenship right. Until now we don't have a right as a citizen of Burma we don't have any citizenship in Burma and then the genocide is still taking place in Burma and until now nothing changed in none of the country or international organization able to resolve this issue and able to stop the genocide. We one of the minority ethnic group in Burma one of the most persecuted minority on the planet and our people are still suffering. We have a more than one million refugees in Bangladesh refugee camp. We have a 150 in Malaysia is living there and we have in Indonesia Thailand neighbor country. So our people are suffering and then the genocide is still taking place. The houses burning down people are burned killed with fire and you know so people try to escape from the genocide. They took a small boat try to cross the river to the Bangladesh and they took a ship to try to leave to Malaysia and then they end up in Thailand and they will be arrested. The people are detained in Thailand. So that is our current situation. I am able to resettle in 2012. So I was in Chicago and we established a cultural center in 2016 and we give service to all the community and then regarding our community center so I would like to pass Sarah. She will be explained more in detail. Thank you for having us. Hi everybody my name is Sarah Peugeot and I'm the assistant director at the Rohingya Culture Center. I've had the privilege of working with the Rohingya starting in 2019 and then I've been working at the Rohingya Culture Center since 2020. The Rohingya Culture Center is a very unique organization. The I said the most special one of the most special things about the organization is its Rohingya refugee ran and Rohingya refugee founded. So 80 percent of the staff there are Rohingya and they could speak the languages to communicate with the community. This is this is really rare with refugee organizations. Typically it's not somebody from the community who's serving the community. In this instance our leaders at the organization know what the community members need because it's their community. So RTC started in 2016 because the Rohingya were falling through the cracks in resettlement. Resettlement is under staff they're overworked and they're underpaid so the system has some flaws in it. So many of the Rohingya were falling through the cracks. They they you know it was very difficult. They came pre-literate. They didn't speak English so they were they were difficult. They had a difficult time. So when this year opened RCC they originally didn't start to they didn't open with the idea of having case management but case management is our largest program at RCC especially since the pandemic. So with the pandemic the COVID-19 pandemic RCC made the choice to stay open because most of the community is pre-literate and can't do can't do case management over text or over emails. They need to be there in person and have a language they understand to successfully have case management. So many of the community members they lost their jobs during that time so RCC stayed open. Nasir and Abduljabbar were there to help community members with unemployment and other services. So with case management there's really many services that are involved in that. There's employment, there's public benefits, medical, there's there's more in-depth case management as well such as if if somebody has an issue they're able to help with that. If somebody wants to buy a car and they know they might get taken advantage of because they don't have the English skills to do that our case managers can help them with that. They can also tell them this is a bill this is junk mail and then help them pay the bills. Our next program that we have that started during the pandemic was health support. We are very fortunate to be vaccinated with health care providers because we were in person. Then our community was able to be vaccinated at the center so we opened that up to the greater community so it's you know all of our services are available to anybody regardless of background but people were able to get COVID vaccines. Then we had flu vaccines. We do we do hepatitis B screening so we have mental health workshops so it's it's really grown a lot in the past few years. Our next program is that I'm going to talk about our ESL classes English as a second language and citizenship classes. These are focused and they're really they were created to assist pre-literate students pre-literate adult students. So with ESL they learn the skills to speak, read, and write in English and then once they finish that they can go into citizenship class and become citizens. So at the end of 2022 we had over 100 US citizens or people who became US citizens in the community which was really exciting. The rest of our programs are really youth focused. So the youth play a very a very interesting role in the community in a very difficult role. If you are 16 and you are resettled into the United States regardless of your your academic history or your language you're still going into high school so a lot of our students and our our youth in the community were falling behind. So of course we have religious education for the students and that's Monday through Friday. We also offer academic support Monday through Friday so we have tutors who come in and support students in reading, writing, studying, homework, or just a safe place to stay while parents are working. We also have soccer teams and we have youth club so we focus on the importance of education and giving back to the community. So I think an important thing to note with our youth club and focusing on education we now have for college graduates in the Rohingya community in Chicago so it's very exciting. All this being said you know we we assist the Rohingya in Chicago but we're able to assist the Rohingya abroad through donations and anybody who comes in our course. So now I'm going to pass it back to us here. Assalamu alaikum. Yes, thank you Sarah for explaining about this. So Rohingya is an unread language. So Rohingya community is spread around the world because we are we have country now we are stateless they keep out they keeping out our people. So today we we Rohingya American we are boys for our community we try our best to make better life for community. So I will go my my let it be my history. I left country 1994 because of poetry because of torture I'm I'm I'm say my own my country and I left countries it's so dangerous because of my family my all myself is so dangerous because of that and 1994 I go to Bangladesh Bangladesh to Thailand Thailand to Malaysia. So Malaysia is Bangladesh also unsafe because of we don't have any document any passport Thailand also same thing no passport no document. So we as a Rohingya I myself we are like swimming swimming cross border like we want to find safe place and finally we I will be able to stay in Malaysia I spent almost 14 years and 2013 I am arrived in residential agency I'm arrived in Chicago 2013 and 2013 I don't speak English and I don't know how to write how to read and and also same like my community it was 2013 is 250 family and 250 family everyone need help so we try our best to make something different for community and like open a space for gathering for prayer room and you know help each other so space is so important for as a community because in Chicago nearby our community live they have every other community they have own a space own place they will get help and and we are as in one new refugee community we don't have a space it was so difficult for us because everything new and you know the the various language so Alhamdulillah so with I mean with my friends the community members we try collect money ten dollar each family but it's not good through because they every family they have job they go to work they will be get small salary like 1600 they pay rent utility bill rent rent is 1400 they got 1700 1600 salary it's not enough so Alhamdulillah so we try almost two years and finally Zakat Foundation of America they were helping us to open a space and open a space and they told me the go help your community and they teaching us how to run organization and this is so big help from Zakat Foundation because of we are as a Rohingya refugee minority we need we need a space almost yeah I mean looking for almost two years so when we get a space so we as a Rohingya community we don't know how to run new everything for us so we have good people with our in area it's like so many volunteers come get help and we have also our board members like one of the teacher one of the doctor they have education they have they know how to run organization they helping us so Alhamdulillah finally with everyone together make team and until today we are non-stop helping community not only Rohingya community everybody who opened up for everybody we welcome everybody and we help and it's so important for us the Rohingya people every every person every people they have hope dream when they have citizen they want to go meet their family they want to go their relatives they want to go Umrah Hajji everyone is dream also my dream same thing when I I got citizen I got passport so I would like to go meet my relative and I can go meet my family because it's so dangerous in Burma and I mean many community they have hope and dream everyone like to go visit their own family so because of that we very hard work supporting education to open citizenship class and when they learn English so they will be test citizen they will be passed then when they pass they get citizen so so and yeah very important for us for the community the RCC is RCC is a new home and is every everyone feel that we have a space not only this country around the world who Rohingya people say that or in in united state we have Rohingya community and Rohingya culture center as a our identity I mean as they can proudly say in USA we have Rohingya name yeah so this is I mean I would like to share that so if anyone any question so I will happy to answer so I'm going to talk about a few our needs at RCC and our hopes for the future so RCC has a very small space we we run all of our programs in this space and we don't have you know we don't have enough room we have more children who'd like to sign up for religious education but we don't have enough room so that's on hold right now we have more students who want to sign up for classes but we don't have the classroom space we have two main rooms at RCC where case management takes place in the same room as ESL and citizenship and then in the evening when the youth are all there there's there's just simply not enough space so we are very fortunate to receive a grant to purchase a space and we're very excited for this however the building we found we are a few hundred dollar a hundred thousand dollars short so we are we are looking to to support ourselves in in making this purchase of a space so if you know anybody's interested in supporting RCC every every penny that's donated to RCC goes directly towards the community whether it's through services or space so if you're interested our website is rccchicago.org we also have Zelle yeah but but something else I wanted to mention why another reason space is so important you know we're we're in Chicago where we have four seasons and it's very um you never know what the next day is going to bring with the weather so I've been at RCC for three years now and I've seen our our annual outdoor Eid prayer three times held outside in our neighboring parking lot the concern we have is next year we aren't able to do that prayer outside because it's going to be so cold um so we're really we're hoping and praying that our space is ready by that time and yes if if there's any questions um feel free to ask and today uh I would like to thank you so much again for invite us and give chance to talk front of you we at the Rohingya refugee and Rohingya community we would like to stand stand by self or community to raise voice for community and it's important spaces own a space is so important and we can do culturally and culture and like activities to our children reminding who they are where they come from and because of that the smallest space is not work we are right now more than 600 family living that area so and and we would like to have own a space so because of that we need your help your support uh and so this is we are new as a new brother new community and supporting us we need your help thank you so much I hope uh you will be visiting rccchicago.org thank you so much if any questions so inshallah sir we'll happy be happy to be answered I just want to mention about the Rohingya situation around the globe and the situation is still dire in in in Burma and our people are still suffering in in Burma and and in the same time in a Bangladesh refugee camp there is a more than more than million uh the individual came and the recently international aid uh announced that there will be a cut of the ration to ten dollars to seven dollars monthly for family it will be very very hard for the for the Rohingya people who are limited food and you know in the same time and so they don't have any healthcare access and education access so our upcoming generation they don't have any future in the refugee camp they could go to the tech of education so we really request brother and sister who are listening to us today and raise your voice today you are local government state senator and talk to the you are a governor you are a mayor you are a representative and and and to take immediate action against Burma government to stop the ongoing genocide in the same time our people able to go home with the with the dignity and the the citizenship right as the ethnic of Rohingya so we we as a community of Chicago we Rohingya commit of Chicago we request the our government our government government of the United States to take immediate action and do something for Rohingya people because now as we know so there's war going on in the in the in the between Russia and Ukraine most of the government like international community focus on that but we feel we live behind and the Rohingya situation Rohingya genocide is take started since 1962 until now it is still ongoing there is no action taken no strong action taken against Burmese government against who committed genocide so we need justice for our people as I'm Rohingya I'm in the United States I'm Rohingya American but my heart is still back in for my country I I'm still feel about my my people who are still in in in refugee camp who are still in Burma so people are really suffering back in Burma and the refugee camp we need your support brother and sister and to raise your voice and to do something about do something for Rohingya to stop immediate stop the genocide and and also help our brother and sister who are in in in in the refugee camp so thank you very much for having us today and allow us to share our personal story and our experience and also our situation in Burma and in other country thank you thank you both for sharing your stories I think through this we can all understand that this isn't just an issue in Chicago it's not just an issue in the Muslim community it's a complex international humanitarian issue that's happening so like Abdul Jabbar said raise your voices to bring attention to what's happening to the Rohingya thank you