Educating refugee ladies from Pakistan, different states to drive goes farther than vacation spot
STONE MOUNTAIN: In a big, empty parking zone exterior Atlanta, one automobile slowly careened round parking areas. From the passenger seat, driving teacher Nancy Gobran peered over massive sun shades at her scholar, a 30-year-old Syrian refugee girl who was driving for one of many first instances in her life.
“Flip the wheel after which speed up,” Gobran, the proprietor of Security Driving College, mentioned softly in Arabic. Gripping the wheel tightly, the coed cautiously rounded the corners of the parking zone for almost an hour.
Gobran has been working for almost 5 years with a program known as Girls Behind the Wheel, which gives 14 hours of free drivers’ training to principally refugee and immigrant ladies. Most of the ladies who enroll come from international locations that discourage ladies from driving or working exterior their dwelling.
It’s not a brand new idea, however Girls Behind the Wheel is exclusive to Georgia. Related applications exist throughout the nation, resembling Refugee Girls Rising in Omaha, Nebraska, which gives driver’s training, seat belt security and automobile seat set up assist, and Driving Alternative in Denver, which gives classroom and street instruction to refugee ladies.
“Serving to plenty of refugees will not be simple,” Gobran mentioned. “Originally, it’s form of awkward for some folks for his or her first time being behind the wheel, however by the top of this system, they gained the profit they’ve been in search of.”
College students join the driving program via Ethaar, an Atlanta-area nonprofit group that aids refugee households via their resettlement. Its identify is an Arabic phrase that means altruism and affection.
Ethaar co-founder Mona Megahed mentioned she began Girls Behind the Wheel to fill a evident want many refugee households have that partially stem from cultural variations.
“We named it Girls Behind the Wheel for a motive,” Megahed mentioned. “We actually needed to empower our feminine shoppers. A number of these ladies have been struggling as a result of they have been totally depending on their spouses.”
She famous some husbands held beliefs from their dwelling international locations that their wives shouldn’t drive or work.
“We shortly defined, properly, you’ll be able to’t actually present when you’re making minimal wage and you’ve got six mouths to feed along with serving to together with your spouse,” Megahed mentioned. “So she additionally must form of learn to drive and discover a job and get on the market.”
The stress might be compounded for households in metro Atlanta, the place many individuals depend on automobiles to get round. Many of the refugee households Ethaar works with settle in Clarkston, a suburb 15 miles (24 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta.
“More often than not due to lack of entry to transportation, it’s onerous for them to get to their jobs,” mentioned Sarah Karim, Ethaar’s government director. “It’s onerous for them to go examine wherever apart from what’s shut by, and there aren’t that many choices, sadly.”
Their clientele relies on the shifting international panorama and conflicts, Karim mentioned.
“These days, we’ve noticed numerous nationalities amongst our shoppers, together with households and people from Afghanistan, Burma, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq, and Eritrea,” Karim mentioned.
To date, there have been 230 graduates of this system, together with a number of males. The driving program sometimes has a three-to-four-month waitlist due to the demand. The US authorities offers refugee households as much as 12 months of monetary and medical help, so there may be restricted time to turn into autonomous.
“The purpose is for each refugee to achieve self-sufficiency or self-reliance,” mentioned Dorian Crosby, a Spelman Faculty professor who’s an skilled in refugee migration.
“Studying easy methods to drive and gaining access to a license is crucial to refugee ladies reaching that stage of self-reliance,” Crosby mentioned. “It’s not simply to satisfy the federal government rules of the cutoff, however they now can maintain themselves. It is usually such an emotional increase.”
Instructors like Gobran are fluent in Arabic, which makes college students extra comfy. She watched her consumer slowly acquire confidence over her hourlong session. A smile crept throughout her face. A month later, her scholar handed her driving take a look at.
“That is their new dwelling, they usually have to know how this nation works,” Gobran mentioned. “It begins with the little or no factor as driving to construct a future.”
