Global Teen Performance Project: Found in Flight
Cleveland Public Theatre in partnership with Thomas Jefferson International Newcomers Academy of the Cleveland Metropolitan School district presents
Global Teen Performance Project: Found in Flight
March 14 & 15
Teenagers from different corners of the world arrive at the airport ready to travel the globe, reunite with family, and make a new home. Flight delays and changing plans compel the travelers to reach out for help and find community in the kindness of strangers. In sharing their personal stories, they find they are not alone despite traveling to an unfamiliar country and being separated from family. Found in Flight, an original performance based on the experiences of 11 international teenagers from 7 countries, is a story of finding footing, forging new pathways, and discovering the power of friendship and family. Global Teen Performance Project participants risk by sharing their path while uncovering commonality as they look to each other for guidance and community.
Found in Flight features original stories and performances created by Global Teen Performance Project, students from Thomas Jefferson International Newcomers Academy, ages 14-19. This performance is the culmination of a rigorous and collaborative after-school rehearsal process between students and CPT teaching artists, with the support and involvement of the school's teachers and staff. Together they have created an original work of theatre based on the students' stories and cultures, and their experiences as newcomers in the U.S. Global Teen Performance Project seeks to enhance cross-cultural understanding among a diverse group of international teens and their new Cleveland community.
7:00pm, CPT's James Levin Theatre.
Tickets: FREE
$5 suggested donation
The Creative Production Team:
Adam Seeholzer – Director & Program Manager
Lexy Lattimore – Assistant Director
Anastasía Urozhaeva – Teaching Artist
Inda Blatch-Geib – Costume & Scenic Designer
Val Kozlenko – Set Construction
For more information visit https://www.cptonline.org/performances/seasons/2018-2019/global-teen-performance-project/?dm_i=4W7A,4UH1,25E9R5,I80G,1
I Moved to Shanghai to Work for Disney!
I moved abroad to Shanghai, China at the end of August 2018. The decision to work and live abroad in Shanghai was motivated by a job opportunity with The Walt Disney Company. I started working for the company in May 2014 as a performer through the college program at Walt Disney World in Orlando. I was intrigued to see how a company as big as Disney functioned in China compared to in the United States. I work as an English teacher for young children through Disney’s extracurricular English program known in China as Disney English. In 2017, China’s extracurricular education market exceeded $4 billion. Many Chinese parents are eager to enroll their children in an extracurricular program to give them a head start in school. Disney English has created their program as a standout among the many other English learning programs throughout China. Shanghai itself is an incredible city. There is a fascinating contrast throughout the city in almost every area. Take, for example, the food. Within the same block, you will likely find carts selling cooked chicken feet, a common street food, and McDonald’s selling some of the exact burgers as in the US. You see the same contrast on the roads, which will be swept by hand with brooms made of bamboo branches, as Teslas and Rolls Royces drive by. It is a unique opportunity to live somewhere growing at a rate as fast as Shanghai, and I’m glad I made the decision to take on the challenge. While many cultural aspects in China including the language and food are still foreign to me, both experiences of working for Disney and living abroad have helped me appreciate how universal many of the classic Disney lessons are. Disney characters and their stories are beloved by the Chinese the same way they are by Americans.
We Are The Champions
Several weeks ago our community was ranked the number one community in the United States in which to become a fully naturalized US citizen. This A+ grade was given to us by Boundless, a policy shop in Seattle. This is a really big deal; it shows how a geography served by the Northern Ohio Federal District Court can attain the highest designation precisely because of our nature. Cleveland is a hard working, nose to the paper place. Our Court and those who serve the United States in the capacity as government employees take their work very seriously. The processing time is fast, the judges are awesome, the office that processes the large caseloads takes every opportunity to treat our newest newcomers with professionalism and expediency. We are also blessed to have some of the most astute immigration attorneys in the nation, women and men who went to law school and mastered one of the most complex aspects of the law. Add to this a multi cultural multi ethnic metropolis that provides affinity and welcome to people whose ancestry is shared and you have a designation that speaks to what is possible.
At Global Cleveland we have been attending each and every naturalization ceremony since June of 2016. We have met and hugged and selfied with people from over 100 different nations. We have provided official certificates of welcome from our civic leadership and added value to these newest citizens’ journeys with information on how to start a business, where to turn if one needs economic development assistance, and mostly an embrace and a gratitude for the almost 12,000 people who have pledged an oath to the United States from the courthouse room here in downtown Cleveland.
There are three things to note:
1. Thousands of people every year are choosing to become US Citizens and doing so here in Northeast Ohio.
2. Four times a month Global Cleveland shows up to this most magical hour to witness and support the newest US Citizens beginning this chapter of their lives. WE ALWAYS WELCOME VOLUNTEERS TO HELP US. PLEASE REACH OUT TO ME AT [email protected] TO LEARN MORE. It will change your life.
3. It’s good to be number one.
Thanks to you for making us the best. Let’s keep the streak alive!
Joe Cimperman, President of Global Cleveland
Volunteers for Professional Connection Program
Among various volunteer opportunities at Global Cleveland, Professional Connection program also includes a volunteering opportunity. Global Cleveland Professional Connection Volunteers are professionals working in Greater Cleveland area, from a variety of industries and with unique backgrounds. Their rich experience and thoughtful insight in their industries are the core asset to this program.
When an international job seeker (immigrant, refugee and/or international student) requests professional connection service, they will be paired with professional connection volunteer(s) based on similar professional backgrounds and interests.
What are your responsibilities as s GC Professional Connection volunteer?
- Meet an international job seeker based on their interest/industry
- Share your professional experience and how you get into the industry
- Give suggestions/advice on their resume
- Take mock interview
- Encourage them to ask you questions they are uncertain about
- Explain them the importance of networking and help them connect to your network.
If you are interested in becoming Professional Connection volunteer and help international job seekers, please contact Supriya Tamang at [email protected]
"Global Cleveland is Excited About 2019"
Every “first of” in a New Year gives all of us a chance to re-energize and dedicate ourselves anew to our passions and vocations. At Global Cleveland we are excited at what 2019 is already bringing. The amount of collaboration between local/county/state government and organizations like ours engaged in welcoming newcomers is at an all time high. This year marks the 3rd Year of InterCle , an event GC started by welcoming our International Students across North East Ohio to our community and to the US. Our Global Employer Summit is back this Spring, providing even more opportunities for our companies and our international talented employees to connect in a way that means a more prosperous, robust economy for everyone. Our Welcoming Week Celebration in September is going to be the best yet, and we are so looking forward to highlighting all our international partners in the important work of being an awesomely welcoming community. And we are so excited to host the first ever international Cleveland Sister Cities Conference with and at the Cleveland Public Library May 1-3. More details to follow on all of these, and more welcome mats and chances to work together than ever. Thanks for your input and support, we look forward to making 2019 our best year yet with you.
Joe Cimperman
Global Cleveland President
Connect with Global Cleveland in 2019
There are many ways you can get connected with Global Cleveland - from networking with civic and business leaders to volunteering at a naturalization ceremony. Sign up today!
Naturalization Ceremonies
Help support and welcome our newest American citizens on what is of the most important days of their lives. Interested? Email [email protected]
Community Navigators
Help members of the ethnic communities understand about their rights and learn about the path to citizenship. Interested? Email [email protected]
Public Safety Recruitment
City of Cleveland Public Safety Recruitment Team is working with Global Cleveland to make each sector more culturally reflective of the community.
Professional Connection
Get help with your resume and cover letter, mock-interview practice and sharing job search skills. Interested? Email [email protected]
Bloggers
We are looking for guest bloggers to contribute to our newsletter on topics including travel, global affairs and international issues. Interested? Email [email protected]
Join Friends of Global Cleveland
Connect with the local community and engage with like-minded young professionals visit https://www.facebook.com/FriendsOfGlobalCleveland
What You Need to Know About the H-1B Visa in 2019
As we walk into 2019, there is a serious discussion among employers, lawyers and international employees about filing H-1B Visa for 2019. H1B visa is a valid three years’ work visa that can be renewed for another three years. Among all the industries, tech firms have been using H-1B visas to hire international talents that cannot be found at home. H-1B Visa Program has become very crucial to both foreigners who want to further build their career and life in the United States and companies, including tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, who hires international job seekers every year.
Ongoing discussion on keeping or limiting H1B Visa Program has become very stressful for international job seekers with American dream. However, the proposal of changes to H1B program made by Trump administration may increase the number of master’s degrees or higher-level degrees H1B visa recipients. Each year, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) opens a total of 85,000 such visas – 20,000 for those with master’s degrees or higher and 65,000 for those applicants who have a bachelor’s degree or equivalent. The applications are accepted on first business day of April every year and visa allocation are exhausted within the first week. USCIS will reverse the order by which USCIS selects H-1B petitions under the H1B cap and the advanced degree exempt. Once a sufficient number of registrations or petitions have been selected for the H-1B cap, USCIS would then select registrations or petitions towards the advanced degree exemption. The proposal also includes plans to modernize the registration process by moving it online. USCIS says that part of the rule would decrease costs for applicants by cutting down on paperwork, making the process more efficient for the government.
For more information and the latest news on the H- 1B visa please visit: https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/temporary-workers/h-1b-specialty-occupations-and-fashion-models/h-1b-fiscal-year-fy-2019-cap-season
Written by Surpriya Tamang
Global Cleveland's Own, Elizabeth Goes to the Mexican Border to Help!
Who chooses to spend a week at a federal detention center run by a private prison company on the border with one of Mexico’s most dangerous cities? I do, and that’s what I did in Laredo, Texas last week through a partnership Global Cleveland has with Jones Day through our work with the National Project for New Americans. Hello, my name is Elizabeth Cusma and I am new the new Administrative Coordinator at Global Cleveland.
A little about me that is relevant to why I had this amazing opportunity: I lived two years in the Catalunya region of Spain for graduate school studying migration policy after having lived 18 months in Phoenix, Arizona looking for work without much success after having lived in Morocco with my young family upon graduation from OSU with a major in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies. It was the Arab Spring and we didn’t feel safe moving further in the Middle East with a new baby to study after my internship with the UNDP was cancelled to remove all non-essential personnel from the region. This is all to say that the Laredo Project opportunity dovetails perfectly with my experience and interests.
My husband and I lived undocumented in Europe trying to find a way to raise our family there, unsuccessfully in the end. We’ve not had to flee any persecution or mortal danger, thank god, but I understand the anxiety and confusion that goes with living in a foreign country with very little context of the larger system and trying to navigate a monstrous bureaucratic process like immigration. From my youngest years I had a special love and appreciation for foreign nationals. My first best friend was a Mexican immigrant we called Frankie. His dad was a substitute teacher in our school district and we loved him. As I grew older the Levantine-American community (Palestine, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon) in North East Ohio captured my imagination and I chose to focus on the middle east hoping to work abroad. As luck would have it, I married a Spanish<>English linguist who also was studying the middle east. As the Arab Spring took off we decided to raise our family with at least Spanish, if we couldn’t live in the Middle East, hence why I’ve been slowing improving my language skills over the last 8 years. And now, immersed in world of language access rights, immigration policy and advocacy, I was hired by Global Cleveland in November. Immediately the Laredo Project was brought to my attention and I jumped at the opportunity. You’ve got to make hay while the sun is shining, but I didn’t think that in my first month I’d be flying south to the border!
I will say that the Jones Day pro bono team has this operation down tight. They’ve got a machine pumping a new set of volunteer attorneys, law students, paralegals, and interpreters to Laredo each and every week. Some volunteers are repeats, most are not. Most are not even immigration attorneys, but the material Jones Day provides prepares them sufficiently for the sort of council the project provides to the detained women. Jones Day mission with this project is to do something exceptional in the American migration arena. This is the only project and only attorneys who see women for free at this stage in their immigration process in the entire country and they are serving a specific group of migrants. From a program perspective it was seamless.
From a personal perspective, it depends how comfortable you are with jails, with telling people hard truths about their situations, about hearing some pretty horrible things, and about working long days (12-14 hours). As one attorney said, “they told me this wasn’t going to be a vacation from work, and it hasn’t been.” The biggest take away for me was that most of the women who were detained had practically no understanding of our immigration process, of our political climate, or the reality that they would be put in jail upon crossing the border. Most of the women did not want to come to the US, per se. It is truly challenging and tragic circumstances that drive people to move so far away.
A few notable cases: A Nicaraguan water inspector who was tortured for a month because she is from a political family that is openly opposed to the government and chose not to attend pro-government rallies (but neither did she attend pro-opposition rallies); a Nicaraguan nurse who gave aid to students hurt in protests by government fire and was fired for her first aid care and then put on a government list to be targeted. A lesbian couple from El Salvador who were violently attacked many times, who were threatened with death in ways similar to a trans-family member who was dismembered and murdered. A Honduran woman who left a marriage she entered at 13 years old to try and be with a childhood friend in the US who made some romantic overtures toward her in the hope of bringing her two small children after her safe arrival as a way to start fresh with a man she cared for. A Guatemalan woman who lived in the US, has US citizen children and went back home for a family death hoping to re-cross without problem but was detained and was not allowed to reunite with her United States citizen children.
It was nice to see some of the SW that was not the Sonoran Desert, where one could pay in pesos, where the main language was Spanish, where you could see into Mexico and listen to the Mexican news and get a different version of events. But it was long, it was hard, and it was worth it.
"There Is Always Something For Which To Be Thankful"
This Thanksgiving, I am extremely thankful for our community. I am thankful for the people who make our lives better, more fulfilled, and more worth living: our international newcomers. I am also thankful for being a part of an organization like Global Cleveland that's committed to serving and supporting all those that come to Cleveland in hopes of a better life. Whether they are forced to leave their war torn countries and start over with empty pockets and nothing but the clothes on their back; or they choose to leave behind their families and friends to study abroad, it is not only my job, but our job to welcome them and to be thankful that they are here.
Global Cleveland is committed to making our community more welcoming for our international newcomers. From mentoring our international students and preparing them for careers in Cleveland, to assisting companies looking to fill their ranks with the best and brightest; we are thankful for our international talent. Global Cleveland is helping to create an environment where our refugees feel empowered, and a key part of our city’s resilience. We are connecting secondary migrants to all that our community has to offer, and awakening the latent ties to our heritage across the globe. We are making it known that we make make our community better by welcoming the world.
This Thanksgiving be thankful for all you have and be mindful of those who have not. Next week on Giving Tuesday we ask that you help us, help our international newcomers by making a donation to Global Cleveland. No gift is too big, and no donation is too small to make a difference.
Thank you in advance for your support and have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Joe Cimperman
Meet Zhenting: From China to Cleveland, From Intern to Vice President
As a native of China, Zhenting brings the first-hand experience in American immigration. Zhenting began as an intern at Cleveland International Fund (CiF), then rose steadily up the ranks to Market Analyst, Operations Manager and now serves as Vice President. CiF is a proven EB-5 Regional Center that connects foreign investors seeking U.S. residency (“green card”) to quality real estate projects. The EB-5 Program is an Immigrant Investor program that provides a method for qualified foreign nationals to receive a permanent US Green Card if they make a $500,000 USD investment into a qualified, job-creating project. As of today, CiF has raised and invested more than $248 million in successful projects and thus preserved over 15,000 jobs in Northeast Ohio. CiF was founded in 2009 and Zhenting has been working for CiF since 2010.
At CiF, Zhenting is responsible for the daily management and monitoring of investment projects, investor relations and immigration process. He reviews all the investment offering materials, establishes and executes operations protocols, manages all the project escrow accounts, and ensures the up-to-date account activity and fund flow monitoring. In terms of investor relations, Zhenting leads the establishment and implementation of the client management system, which is CiF’s proprietary database used to maximize the accuracy and efficiency of company operations.
Moreover, Zhenting is a co-founder of Cleveland Chinese Entrepreneur Association, a professional organization bringing Chinese entrepreneurs to Cleveland and Cleveland to China. Together with his entrepreneur partners from both Cleveland and China, Zhenting further established a Chinese network platform ("Sun Tribe", a social media platform on smartphone), which currently covers the whole Chinese community in the Greater Cleveland area. As the new generations are used to do everything on smartphones, Zhenting and his partners are now cooperating with the mobile payment services from China and aiming to help businesses in the US tackle payment barriers to the Chinese consumers, processing and settling cross-border payments into US dollars.
In 2018, Zhenting is selected by Crain's Cleveland Business for the prestigious “Forty Under 40" group. When asked the reason why choosing Cleveland, Zhenting said it is actually his honor to be selected and accepted by this city. This city offered him one opportunity to stay and now it is his pleasure to bring investments and jobs back to this beautiful place.
Zhenting earned his Bachelor’s degree from Nankai University in China and two Master’s degrees in business administration and accounting from Cleveland State University. Zhenting lives in the eastern suburb of Cleveland with his wife from Taiwan and they have a lovely daughter Mia.
