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| Rosewood Neighborhood: Vietnamese, English, Spanish & Jarai. |
THE WOMEN’S LEARNING GROUP was created in 2012 by Montagnard refugee women to address community problems:
(1) Social, language and cultural isolation and the lack of good information
(2) The inability to maintain good food gardens because of poor soil and expensive water bills
(3) The inability of mothers and grandmothers to attend language and culturally-appropriate classes that could prepare them to interact with their neighbors, find jobs or become involved with their ethnically diverse neighborhood.
The organizers are community health workers who are also mothers and grandmothers. One was a village health worker for ten years. Another speaks half a dozen languages although she never went to school. The third is a former medical doctor who like other doctors in her community, has sought opportunities to work with local American health professionals in order to provide culturally competent health service. The group meets in the Rosewood Neighborhood located in Greensboro, North Carolina. Rosewood consists of 14 blocks bounded by Wendover Avenue, Summit Avenue and O. Henry Boulevard (NC 29) and is about 1.5 miles from downtown Greensboro. It is an ethnically and racially mixed population with about 25% Montagnard families in a city that has seen a doubling of the Asian population from 2000 to 2010.
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Building Stronger Neighborhoods has awarded a grant to the Women’s Learning Group in Rosewood for $2,808.00. Building Stronger Neighborhoods is a community grantmaking program that connects with neighborhoods through grants and activities that mobilize neighborhood assets to enhance the quality of life. The BSN Coalition includes the Jospeh M. Bryan Foundation, Cemala Foundation, the Community Foundation of Greater Greensboro, Greensboro Public Library, Moses Cone-Wesley Long Community Health Foundation, and the Weaver Foundation.
