From the Word to the World: Brown Refugee Youth Tutoring and Enrichment (BRYTE)

 

by: Rachel Levenson

     During the winter vacation of my freshman year, long before I decided that I would become a Comparative Literature concentrator, I read Dave Eggers’ semi-biographical novel What is the What. There were many aspects of this novel that struck a deep chord within me: the harshness of the lives of refugees in America, the exotic and terrifying accounts of long walks and near death encounters with lions, tragic love stories and romantic reunions. But one fact awakened in me a passion for action and education that has since directed my Brown career: Valentino, the story’s protagonist, could not tell his own story. It was not until Dave Eggers, an already famous novelist, took the time to sit down with Valentino that he was both linguistically and financially able to set his story to the written word. If Dave Eggers had not decided to write a book about Sudanese refugees, if he had not decided to interview Valentino, it is most likely that Valentino still would have been working graveyard shifts and facing repeated rejections on his college applications. And inside Valentino, an important story would have sat untold until it, like those Lost Boys who did not make it through their treks in the Sudanese desert, sat down against a tree, closed its eyes, and died. But Valentino’s story was told, and from the telling of this story appeared ripples of action that are still unfolding, particularly in my own life. What I have learned from reading about Valentino is that stories do have consequences. Literature not only reflects or responds to the world, but it also can reform it.

    I began to tutor with Brown Refugee Youth Tutoring and Enrichment (BRYTE) the following semester. I was matched with Solomon, a then fifteen year old who had arrived in the U.S. only a month before I started working with him. Tutoring Solomon has persistently been one of the most educational aspects of my Brown experience. Like Valentino, Solomon has a story. But unlike Valentino, who could not write his story on his own, Solomon has the chance to learn how to express himself on paper and to author the change in his own life. It is this knowledge that motivates me to visit Solomon week after week. 

    In addition to working as a BRYTE tutor, I began training to become a BRYTE coordinator in the spring of 2008, a position that I took over this past September. As a tutor for BRYTE, I am committed to an individual: Solomon. As a coordinator, I have learned about my potential for effecting change on a community wide scale. While I began work with BRYTE interested in learning the story of an individual, from my coordinator work I have also become interested in the story of a community and the ways that I can best address the needs of thecommunity I am working in as a leader of the BRYTE. Through the window of refugee resettlement, I have been able to look at broader community- and society-wide issues and reach a better understanding of how different pieces of the public and private sectors fit together. Along with this learning, however, is also the recognition that one missing puzzle piece will inhibit the entire puzzle from reaching completion. Whether that missing piece is literacy or mental health care or having the money to buy a new pair of shoes, I have reached a higher understanding of the interrelationships that can both include and exclude residents of this country.

    In What is the What, the organization who helped Valentino disintegrated, despite the intentions and leadership skills of the woman behind it. It is my goal over the course of the next few months to make sure that this does not happen to BRYTE.  As a leader of BRYTE, I have learned to anticipate, identify and respond to various problems that emerge when one is trying to help a large collection of people. Through frequent communication between myself, the International Institute and the Swearer Center, however, I also witnessed the tremendous potential results of collaborations between different partners all interested in the same overall goal. As I work to reevaluate and redesign BRYTE, I am going to work with these community partners. My work will accumulate in a web site and strategic plan and ultimately a more sustainable and effective student-run organization.

Currently, I am half a world away from Providence, Rhode Island. I am studying abroad in Vietnam as part of the International Honors Program’s Health and Community semester. I arrived in Vietnam yesterday, after having spent a month and a half in Tanzania and two weeks in Washington D.C.. While I am physically far from Providence, I am very much in the social entrepreneurship mindset. Through this comparative program I have seen how people address inequality, specifically health inequality in many different domains. In the next post I will discuss what I have learned from this program.

Until then,

Rachel