In keeping with the fast-growing Latino population in Schuylkill County, the support available to Spanish-speaking immigrants is expanding.
On Tuesday at Pressed Coffee and Books in downtown Pottsville, “Puentes de Apoyo,” or “Bridges of Support,” featured doctors, teachers and pastors ready to meet, greet and answer questions from newcomers to the area, and explain how to tap into the local resources available.
The event was held to spread the word and connect the Latino community with the services they need.
“There is help out there, but many of them don’t know about it,” said Kevin Medina, who organized the event. “We want to make them more aware of those opportunities.”
Medina knows well what a difference a helping hand can make.
About 15 years ago, as a teenager in Honduras, he met a Pottsville family on a church mission. That family invited Medina to come home with them.
“It was an amazing opportunity,” said Medina of that meeting that led him to America, and more specifically to Schuylkill County.
Medina, now 31, is an insurance agent and notary public living in Palo Alto. He said that having come from a less-developed country to an area where the Latino population is still the minority but is rising helps him understand what it’s like for newcomers trying to adapt, and for longtime residents here to adjust to changing demographics.
Medina hopes that local businesses see the opportunity that the growing Latino community in Schuylkill offers them as new customers. What’s more, the community needs to recognize the value of its population becoming more diverse. And he hopes that recent Latino immigrants support those businesses, attend local events and work to be part of the community they’ve settled in.
“This is the reality of it. It’s happening,” he said of the Latino influx in Schuylkill. “Diversity means growth. We should try to make it work for everybody.”
For example, Medina said, there are agencies and businesses in the Pottsville area where staff members speak both English and Spanish. That is helpful to Latinos who fear a language barrier will prevent them from getting assistance. Medina works for Nationwide Insurance in Pottsville and also Allentown. He said he has Latino clients from Schuylkill come to his Lehigh County office seeking him out because they know he speaks Spanish — not realizing that help was available much closer to home.
Nate Hafer, who teaches English as a second language classes to adults through Lifelong Learning and the Schuylkill intermediate unit, was among the professionals on hand, as were some of his recent students.
While ESL courses are available to many high school students, it can be harder for adults to learn English in part because of their work schedules and also because younger brains are more adept at language acquisition, Hafer said. That is therefore the audience that he targets, knowing that teaching immigrants English increases the likelihood that they’ll succeed, benefitting both them and the towns they live in, he said.
“Successfully improving their English skills is pivotal to them and to the community,” he said.
Pastor Luis Rivera of Iglesia Cristiana El Karros church in Pottsville was also at the event, saying that his primarily Latino congregation has jumped from 14 members three years ago to 102 now, a reflection of Hispanic growth in the city.
Regarding medicine, many newcomers to the U.S. are fearful to seek care because they fear being detained or deported, said Robert Alonge, CEO of Volunteers in Medicine in Schuylkill and Carbon Counties.
His nonprofit has medical offices in Tamaqua and Pottsville that have seen the number of Latino patients they serve triple in the last month or so as news has spread of ICE raids across the country, he said.
That’s partly because parents needing to get their children check-ups before school started felt safe coming to his medical facilities for that service, he said. Some of those parents were convinced by the volunteer medical staffs to get long-neglected health care for themselves as well, he said.
Volunteers in Medicine runs on donations from people who realize the importance of the cause. The alternative, he said, is that people in the community will grow sicker or use emergency rooms for more routine health care if they don’t have insurance, a cycle that increases everyone’s medical costs, he said.
As community members came into Pressed on Tuesday asking questions about available services in the region, owner Abby Weaver said that is why she agreed to host the event in her shop, and will host a similar one from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Oct. 14.
The more co-mingling there is between Spanish and English-speaking residents, the closer the community will become, she said.
“They’re already here,” she said of Latino immigrants. “Now it’s a matter of making a connection with them.”