Berkshire Interfaith Organizing

At BIO, we bring people of faith and values together across lines of difference, uniting them in service of a collectively felt call to action. Spanning the entirety of Berkshire County, we are fortunate to encounter people from all walks of life.

Many in our community feel at home in the Berkshires. It can be, as one of our leaders once described, “like living in a Norman Rockwell painting,” spending time in tiny towns of rosy, smiling faces and never questioning that you belong.

However, not all residents of our county are painted on that iconic canvas. Our friends from the growing immigrant, Latino, and Spanish-speaking communities are increasingly left at the margins of our community.

Through relationship building in these communities, we’ve learned that three systemic barriers—transportation, language, and childcare—deter them from participating in BIO’s work of making social justice real in the Berkshires.

We’re asking you to help us raise funds to address these three issues in the following ways:

1.    Accompaniment trips. BIO has launched an immigrant accompaniment program, with over 43 volunteers trained to drive an immigrant to their ICE check-in or court date, accompany them as they wait and undergo the check-in process, and bear witness with the goal of preventing them from being detained and deported.

Since the program’s launch in January, we’ve accompanied three immigrants to their appointments, and have several more booked for April. Our immigrant partners say that our support makes them feel more at ease during these tense, risky moments. It also relieves the financial burden of finding transportation from Berkshire County to what are usually monthly mandatory check-ins in Hartford, CT or Boston, MA.

We offer this service completely free of charge. We are asking you to support our staff in making frequent round trips from Berkshire County to Hartford and sometimes Boston, in order to ensure that our immigrant partners have as safe and comfortable an experience as possible while navigating our broken immigration system. The average accompaniment costs $100 per trip, and we are hoping to fund 12 trips. We are asking for $1,200 for the cost of this work.

 
2.    Interpretation services. Two of our BIO organizers are fluent Spanish speakers, which has been key in building relationships in the immigrant community. But without funds for interpretation services, our meetings are inaccessible to monolingual Spanish speakers who want to join our organizing efforts. Hiring a local and professional interpreter for BIO meetings would lift up the voices of Spanish speakers in our organization, and by extension, the county. We are asking for $3,000, the cost of interpretation for a year’s worth of trainings and monthly meetings, as well as the headsets needed for the service to work.

 
3.    Food and Childcare providers. Leaders in the immigrant and Latino community live full, vibrant lives. Many have small children, and work one or more jobs to provide for their families. We would like to offer food and childcare at our meetings, to ensure that leaders who are parents have the opportunity for full participation outside of workday hours. We are asking for $1,200, which is the cost of food and childcare for a year’s worth of monthly meetings.

 
Any donations beyond the $5,400 for interpretation, food, childcare, and accompaniment will go towards presentation materials, such as a projector and Bluetooth speaker for larger meetings and conference calls in service of this same work.

We thank you for your support of our work and hope you are able to contribute. To see firsthand the spirit of what we do, check out our Why BIO? video above. And if you want to learn more about our immigrant justice work and accompaniment program, check out our website at berkshireinterfaithorganizing.org .

With your support we can paint a new and brighter picture of the Berkshires, in which it is a true home for all.

 
In solidarity,

Wendy, Jeff, and Dondei, BIO Organizers
BIO Community Leaders