Penn GSE Students Help Break Down Barriers

At the Chinese take-out restaurants along West Philadelphia's 52nd Street corridor, customers — most of them African American — are, as often as not, welcomed by a bullet-proof plastic barrier.

"From the Chinese people's side," says Li Hong Qiao, a student in Penn GSE's Intercultural Communication program, "they had to use a plastic barrier to protect themselves. But from the other side, they feel this barrier as a real barrier, to exclude them."

Li was talking with Fatimah Muhammad, manager of the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians West, a non-profit program designed to help new immigrants adapt to their new communities.

The pair was speaking about the oft times troubled relations between Asian merchants who've established new businesses on 52nd Street corridor and the African-American community they serve. Their candid conversation touched on the cultural barriers created by differing languages and customs — as well as those literal, plastic barriers.

But to anyone listening to their conversation, the friendship between the pair — an African-American woman and a recent arrival from China — was palpable.

In 2008, Muhammad teamed up with Li and his ICC classmate Xupeng Liang to pioneer the Intercultural Organizing and Research Program (ICORP), an outreach program that connects GSE students to foreign-owned businesses in West Philadelphia and Germantown.

Anne Pomerantz, a lecturer in GSE's ICC program, explains that, for the students, ICORP means a chance to hone their skills in interpreting and community organizing. For the merchants, it means access to resources they didn't know about — or couldn't read.

The students — many of them from China and Korea — conducted surveys to determine the challenges faced by merchants with limited English. Findings from a survey of 56 merchants revealed that half had either been the victim of harassment or crime and that more than 35 percent were concerned for their safety.

Muhammad organized meetings with community stakeholders — the local business association, the police, the Chinese merchants — and, with GSE students translating, the groups began talking. With the launch of a security education campaign that features materials translated into Chinese, merchants now know more about preventing and reporting crimes.

TESOL students have also developed English-language classes targeted to the particular business needs of the merchants. As Pomerantz explains, "In our classes, we stress the value of multilingualism. Through this program, they learn in a very hands-on way that their own emergent bilingualism is valued."

To hear Fatimah Muhammad and Li Hong Qiao talk about their work together, click here.