Housed in an office behind St. Stephen's Episcopal Church in downtown Pittsfield, the center is as busy as it’s ever been.
“So in 2022, we're really focusing on assisting with Afghan evacuee resettlement. We're been working really hard to help some of those recent arrivals in Berkshire County to file their asylum paperwork, get them introduced to volunteers in the area, along with JFS, and working really closely with Jewish Family Services on those resettlement efforts," said Executive Director Michelle Lopez. “We are fundraising for our Pathways program, which will provide scholarships for those who cannot afford to pay the steep U.S. citizen immigration service fees that unfortunately only continued to climb. We've seen a lot of backlogs lately with people being able to have their citizenship tests and citizenship ceremonies performed. So we're just focusing on all of these new obstacles that, unfortunately, our local immigrants are facing and finding ways to make things go smoother for them and support them in any way that we can.”
The nonprofit was founded by the Jewish Federation of the Berkshires in 1997 to resettle Russian refugees. It has a staff in the single digits and relies on donations and grants to operate.
“We are 90% funded by the fundraising that we do, and 10% just for services and fees. But we could not serve the 750, 800 clients that we see every year in our offices with legal services and free classes for citizenship preparation and English classes without the support of the community,” said Development Director Sheryl Lechner.
This year’s One World Celebration isn’t just about the 25-year milestone. Lopez says the Berkshire Immigrant Center has grown more in 2022 than any year prior.
“We finally became a 501(c)(3) independent nonprofit," she told WAMC. "We have spent 24 years under various different fiscal agencies, and we are finally now out on our own and looking forward to growing our capacity with our staff, our volunteers, our board, and thusly being able to offer more services to more local immigrants and ensure that they can thrive.”
That said, it’s also about the fundraising.
“Most of the funds that are raised from this event are going to be going toward all of these services that we provide for free or at a low cost to continue to support the immigrant population," said Lopez. "So we just wanted to make sure that we have a day that really focuses on the celebration of the diversity in our county, and with the funds, be able to continue our work and expand and help even more people, because we've seen our numbers go up almost 100 clients from last fiscal year. So we know that the need is growing.”
Sunday’s festivities will bring live music to the grounds of Shakespeare & Company.
“Jorge Ávila, who’s a very accomplished, an award-winning violinist who's a native of Honduras, now part-time resident of South County in the Berkshires, and he will be accompanied by a guitarist, Oren Fader, who is also a well-known soloist and chamber music performer in the New York City area," said Lechner. "Jorge is a veteran of Broadway, Carnegie Hall. He was a Tanglewood fellow, and he actually came to the U.S. originally to study music at college, because, as he's told us, there really is not much of a classical music culture, or there wasn't when he was growing up as a boy, in Honduras. And it's kind of a miracle that that he was able to make a career out of classical music and playing the violin from where he began.”
The event will be emceed by actor James Warwick, who himself is an immigrant hailing from the United Kingdom who now lives in the Berkshires. A veteran of the stage and screen, you might remember him from performances on “Dr. Who,” voicing Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn in video games like "Star Wars: Jar Jar’s Journey," and the recently remastered series “Partners in Crime,” based on the writing of Agatha Christie.
“The Berkshire Immigrant Center helps them with ESL classes," Warwick told WAMC. "They support the legal application process. They work through the huge challenge of finding housing. I know that they're working with Afghan young people who have arrived and helping them integrate into this community, this wonderful community. That's part of the work they do. So that's why I had to, you know, take part in this when they asked me. It's such good work.”
