BUFFALO, N.Y. — The City of Good Neighbors is once again opening its doors to help people. Two local groups are working together to find jobs for immigrants, refugees, and asylees.
The International Institute of Buffalo and Leadership Buffalo are providing mentorship opportunities for these people. The organizations are doing this through the Professional Pathway Program to help them continue their careers or pursue higher education in Buffalo.
They want to connect local professionals to mentees who have the same backgrounds that they had when they were in their home countries.
Volunteer mentors will share their personal experiences in their career journey, talk about navigating barriers in the United States and help find professional networking opportunities- like conferences, events, or courses to take.
Those professions could range anywhere from finance to the medical industry.
"If you are a doctor back home, it might be too hard today to be a doctor at mid-age with kids starting over, you are not necessarily going to want to go to medical school. But you can for sure get some credentials and a course or two, and then end up working as a medical assistant or as a hospital manager or administrator. Those are things that are transferable, because you already know a lot about that industry, so we try to build that bridge," Jennifer Rizzo-Choi, the executive director at the International Institute of Buffalo said.
Buffalo is one of seventeen sites across the country to have this professional career pathway funding. This mentorship project is funded through the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement.
The first meeting will be held on Nov. 2.