How The Twin Cities Is Making Transit Accessible To Immigrants And Refugees

With extra buses available due to lower ridership during the pandemic, Metro Transit worked with key partners to turn six buses into mobile vaccination clinics. Metro Transit provided drivers and retrofitted the buses by removing seats, relocating stanchions, and ensuring buses could draw power from electrical outlets. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota provided staff and licensed clinicians to administer the vaccines. The health department provided funding that made it all come together. The buses prioritized areas with gaps in vaccine access, including low-income areas and communities of color.

Lincoln Literacy addresses language barriers for immigrants and refugees through a volunteer-based ESL program that offers over 100 classes across nine locations in Lincoln, Nebraska. The organization's model includes community classes, workplace partnerships where employers pay for on-site instruction during work hours and a student-centered curriculum that adapts to real-world communication needs. The group has been operating since 1975.

NaviLens developed an app that scans codes posted at bus stops and train stations to provide real-time information via audio and vibration cues for people who are blind or have low vision. The NaviLens app provides information on when the next bus or train is coming, how far a user is from the nearest elevator, and other key details to make the transportation process smoother.

The Heberthausen Asylum Support Group helps incoming migrants and refugees find housing, jobs and learn the German language to integrate with society and work towards citizenship.

The Kupalinka theater school is a space for adult and children refugees from Belarus and Ukraine to gather to learn how to run a theater and perform for the community. Theater classes help keep the culture and native languages of their homelands alive. The theater also provides a safe space for fun, creativity and connection, helping refugees manage the stress and grief of fleeing home.

The Manhattan Afghan Resettlement Team (MART) helps Afghan refugees escape Taliban oppression and build new lives in the U.S. MART helps to connect refugees with the local Islamic Center for meetings about adjusting to life in the U.S. and language courses, as well as help getting a Social Security card, a job and enrolling their children in school. To date, over 100 refugees have been successfully resettled.

The Skills Factory provides refugees and migrants a place to develop valuable skills, like phone repair, and express their creativity through activities like painting, photography, and furniture making. Not only does the Skills Factory provide a place for refugees to improve upon their skillsets, but it also offers a sense of community.

The Center for Ability, Rehabilitation, and Empowerment (CARE) helps people with disabilities navigate the boarding and departing process at airports by setting up a disability desk with resources including people trained in navigating the challenges people with disabilities often face at airports.

Solar-powered e-paper signs provide schedule information to riders at transit agencies in the United States for those who can’t access the information on their cell phones.

Catholic Charities helps immigrants and refugees access housing and transition to life in a new country. Housing is the first step in the resettlement process, but Catholic Charities also helps immigrants find jobs, get their children in school and integrate into the community. In 2007, Fort Wayne welcomed 3,500 Burmese refugees. By 2016 the number had grown to more than 6,000 and counting.