Lending a Helping Hand to Refugees Is Her Purpose

Michele McRae, of Giving+Learning, mentors a recent Burundi refugee. Photo: Civic Ventures 2008

When Michele McRae moved to Fargo, N.D., to retire in 2001, she wondered what she would do with the rest of her life. Little did she know that she would find a new passion with an international flair—helping immigrants from around the world settle into American life.

McRae, 71, is director of the Giving+Learning center in Fargo, where volunteers are recruited to mentor refugees and immigrants by helping them learn English. For her work, McRae is among the 15 winners of this year’s Purpose Prize, awarded by Civic Ventures, a San Francisco think tank.

“What do you do with the last part of your life? Do you play bingo?” asks McRae. “It’s just been kind of a cliché, but this work is inspirational.”

The Purpose Prize was developed to celebrate people age 60 and older who are using creative and effective ways to solve some of the country’s more pressing social problems. McRae was nominated by coworker Rachel Mertz, coordinator of volunteers at Giving+Learning.

“I see every day, all the time, that she puts herself into what she does wholeheartedly. She doesn’t tell people no,” Mertz says.

McRae, a former professor of French at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minn., is one of six people to each receive a $100,000 prize; another nine will be awarded $10,000 each.

For McRae, the money is secondary to the satisfaction she gets from helping immigrants become part of her community. Fargo is one of a number of metropolitan areas in the United States that receive refugees from countries in conflict. In 2007, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement, 204 refugees settled in Fargo. About 94 percent of the city’s population is white, but now refugees from places such as Burundi, Somalia and Iraq are beginning to call Fargo home.

“Our mission statement is, ‘Mentoring new Americans to succeed,’ ” McRae says. “They don’t know they’re coming here, and many have been living in refugee camps. They know very little, if any, English.”

The idea of Giving+Learning began in 2001 with the Healthy Community Initiative and Catholic Health Initiatives. McRae was the first person to be hired for Giving+Leaning, and she was eager to help break the ice between Fargo residents and the emerging refugee community. McRae says she saw an older population with a lot of talent and time and the refugees trying to adjust to Fargo. She thought if she could get just one retiree at a time to help one refugee learn English, things would improve.

“People in Fargo were afraid, but it’s getting less and less. If you are helping someone work on English words in their kitchen, it’s harder to hate them,” McRae says. “It’s very difficult to look at someone you’re helping and think they shouldn’t be here.”

McRae estimates that Giving+Learning has helped 600 refugees learn English, with many of them passing tests for hard-to-fill jobs such as bus drivers and certified nursing assistants. The newly certified refugees are able to give back to the community through their work—a win-win for both natives and refugees.

Hatidza Asovic is just one of the many immigrants who have benefited from the program. The native of the land now known as Montenegro already had a good command of English but not much formal education. With McRae’s help, Asovic passed the test for a general equivalency diploma and is now majoring in emergency management at North Dakota State University.

“I never thought I’d be independent, like I am today,” says Asovic, 36. “I see myself as a strong, smart independent woman who has accomplished so much in a short time.”

Asovic says McRae is a wonderful role model, especially because she does so much at her age. But McRae sees her age as an advantage, and it’s the motivation for pouring so much into the Giving+Learning program, the refugees and Fargo.

“You think of retirement as the good years,” McRae says. “ I’m retired, but [my work] has been way beyond that.”

Angela Bryant Starke is a writer in Knoxville, Tenn.