Asia Aseieva, who works at a preschool in Southeast Portland, sat at a table on the upper floor and thought back to the time she left her Ukrainian residence. She began to cry as she remembered the horrific Russian assault of Mariupol three years prior.
In the February 2022 military attack, she lost her grandmother, her parents-in-law, and the city where she had lived all of her life. She replied, “It’s still too fresh a wound to put into words.” The war’s third anniversary is on Monday.
It’s quite difficult to discuss, The 42-year-old Aseieva spoke through a translator.
She finally found her way to Portland after a year and a half of chaos and uncertainty. The Multnomah County sPreschool for All program has helped 16 Ukrainian immigrants find employment, including Aseieva, who worked as a preschool teaching assistant in Mariupol.
After fleeing to Europe in May 2022 with her husband and two children, now aged 10 and 18, Aseieva finally arrived in the United States in August 2023 via the Uniting for Ukraine program. The federal program assisted in locating financial sponsors for Ukrainian refugees to relocate to the United States; the Trump Administration halted it in January. As long as they sought for work authorization, refugees were permitted to remain in the nation for a maximum of two years.
According to Aseieva, she was lucky to find a sponsor in Portland and already had acquaintances who had left Ukraine and relocated to Oregon.
Until her husband, Oleksii Aseieva, who was employed at the Mariupol sea port, found employment as an auto mechanic, she remained with friends. Although Asia Aseieva had worked in preschools in Ukraine, she didn’t know what positions would be available because she didn’t understand English before coming to Portland. She began going to Ukrainian refugee activities in the Portland area in order to meet new people and get assistance.
At that point, she learned about a preschool internship that provided practical experience.
Kseniia Ninow, Aseieva’s career coach with SE Works, a charity that provides professional counseling to marginalized and low-income groups, said that’s how they met. We chose the internship because it would be a perfect starting step for her to pursue her career here as an educator, and she has a master’s degree in pedagogy from Ukraine.
According to Ninow, the hardest obstacle for migrants to overcome is frequently a lack of proficiency in English. Furthermore, even if a person is skilled, some firms will not hire them into higher-level roles if they have temporary immigration status, according to Ninow.
Ninow assisted Aseieva in applying to the Early Learning Works program in Multnomah County, which is an endeavor by workforce organization Worksystems to recruit and train preschool providers in support of the county’s universal preschool program.
Preschool for All, financed by a high-income earners tax passed by voters in 2020, is to guarantee that the county can provide 11,000 3- and 4-year-olds with free, publicly-funded preschool by 2030. The well-funded county program has come under fire for its slow enrollment growth. Officials lowered their 2022 targets for the number of free preschool seats they planned to create, citing a shortage of providers as a contributing factor.
Preschools and early learning programs suffered during the COVID-19 pandemic, which the industry has yet to fully recover from, according to Patrick Gihring, chief program officer at Worksystems. According to him, Worksystems started the preschool internship program in 2023 to find job seekers who wanted to begin a career in a field that was in dire need of workers.
Although Worksystems did not actively target refugees with the internship program, Gihring claimed word-of-mouth advertising helped spread the news.
According to him, 13 out of the 50 interns enrolled in the internship program as of Thursday were Ukrainian refugees. Three more are completing the requirements to begin working at a preschool. Even if a person does not speak English well, the curriculum enables them to begin training for a preschool profession.
According to Gihring, these people had no idea what they were about to do. Having the chance to begin a profession like this while still studying English is simply incredible.
Depending on whether the trainee is multilingual or not, the program pays $17 to $19 per hour, which is marginally more than the $15.95 minimum wage in the Portland area, according to Gihring. The 300-hour curriculum includes coaching on teaching techniques as well as on-site and online training. Twenty hours a week are spent by interns at Preschool for All locations throughout the county.
According to Gihring, the program offers a route to a more secure career, despite the low starting pay and hours. Gihring claims that the average pay for a lead preschool instructor is up to $39 per hour. Thirteen of the fifty interns assigned by Worksystems through the program were hired by the preschool where they were employed. According to Gihring, three of those recent hires are Ukrainian refugees.
Asia Aseieva and Dominique Garcia (left) are seated in the Solid Foundation Child Care classroom in Southeast Portland. The preschool collaborates with the Preschool for All initiative in Multnomah County.De Dios, Austin, or The Oregonian
Among them is Aseieva, who joined the program in September. She currently attends Portland Community College to learn English and earns $22 per hour at Solid Foundation Child Care in Southeast Portland.
The program has been quite beneficial, according to Dominique Garcia, the creator and owner of Solid Foundation.
“I wish there was a program that could send me teachers,” she remarked when she initially started. They sent me roughly seven people, and it was everything I had hoped and prayed for.
Garcia, who is a member of the Preschool for All advisory group, founded Solid Foundation in 2021 because she felt that Portland lacked adequate early childhood programming. For many years, Oregon State University researchers have classified a large portion of Oregon as a child care desert, which is defined as an area where less than 33% of children have access to child care. Researchers discovered that in 2022, half of the state’s counties were deemed child care deserts for preschool-aged children. According to the report, Multnomah County only had spots for half of preschool-aged children, even though it wasn’t regarded as a child care desert for that age group.
“There are only three teachers and eight students in Garcia’s program,” she stated. Nestled in a townhouse in the Powellhurst-Gilbert area, the school collaborates with Preschool Promise, a state program that provides free preschool seats for people at or below 200% of the poverty line, as well as Preschool for All, which serves families of all income levels. In September, she intends to start a second preschool in the area.
According to her, Garcia was so delighted by Aseiesa that she gave her a full-time position to oversee the school’s quality assurance. The two have grown to be firm colleagues and close friends.
According to Garcia, it has been a dream come true. She approaches her work with a great deal of drive, initiative, and enthusiasm for the kids.
According to Aseieva, she was at level zero when she relocated to Oregon. She might not have had the opportunity to pursue her profession in early childhood education without the Worksystems program.
Aseieva stated, “I am really appreciative that I have the chance to start my life over.”
Austin De Dios reports on programs, politics, and other topics in Multnomah County. You can reach him at @AustinDeDios, [email protected], or 503-319-9744.
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