14729: Hermantin: Miami Herald-Creole-speaking aide to be hired with grant (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: leonie hermantin <lhermantin@hotmail.com>

Posted on Thu, Feb. 06, 2003

Miami Herald

NORTH MIAMI
Creole-speaking aide to be hired with grant
BY DAVID OVALLE
dovalle@herald.com

The North Miami City Council last week awarded a $10,000 federal grant to a
community group that will pay for a Creole-speaking social worker to reach
out to Haitian senior citizens.

The North Miami Foundation for Senior Citizens will use the money as part of
the program ``Helping Haitian Seniors.''

The aide will help educate senior citizens about eating right, staying fit
and getting access to services available to them.

''It's enormously important to us. It allows us to have a Creole-speaking
aide to reach out to the Haitian elders and get them important services,''
said foundation director Debbie Kleinberg.

The need for a Creole-speaking social workers is pressing in North Miami, a
city characterized by rapidly changing demographics and a budding
Haitian-American population.

About 55 percent of the city's population is black, according to census
data. Many of those are Haitian Americans.

''The foundation is doing good work,'' said Councilman Scott Galvin. ``We
know we have a large number of senior citizens that are Haitian American.
They are in the system and social workers can't communicate with them.''

The council awarded the money during last Tuesday's meeting as part of the
federally funded Community Development Block Grant Funding, a pot of
$100,000 given to cities of 50,000 residents or more. It is the fourth year
the city has awarded such grants.

Overall, the council gave the federal money to 12-community based groups,
most located in North Miami or slices of surrounding unincorporated
Miami-Dade County.

They are: APHEC International, Aspira of Florida, Catholic Charities of the
Archdiocese of Miami, Drug & Juvenile Delinquency Prevention Center, Food
for Life Network, Haitian Women of Miami, Jewish Community Services of South
Florida, NANAY, South Florida Food Recovery, The Center for Positive
Connections and The M Ensemble Company.

This year, the city was forced to use about $20,000 of the federal grant to
finish a parking lot across from City Hall that ran over budget.

Councilman Michael Blynn said that while the loss of the money that would go
to community groups is unfortunate, downtown redevelopment is key to
attracting business to the city.

''We'd love to have more money to generate for those projects,'' Blynn said.
``They're all good projects and the money circulates within the city.''








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