Ramsey County History – Summer 2019: “One Hundred Years Serving New Americans: The Centennial of the International Institute of Minnesota”

One Hundred Years Serving New Americans: The Centennial of the International Institute of Minnesota
Author: Krista Finstad Hanson

2020 Co-Winner of the Ramsey County Historical Society Virginia B. Kunz Award

As visitors and clients open the doors to the International Institute of Minnesota in St. Paul, they leave behind the every-day-Como-Avenue-scene across from the Minnesota State Fairgrounds and step into a vibrant, diverse, international world, buzzing with conversations in languages from around the globe. In one room, students from Mexico, Somalia, Egypt, and China throw a baby shower for a classmate, and the instructor turns the celebration into a learning opportunity: Students write congratulatory messages on the white board in their own languages, and then they huddle at desks to quiz one another over common baby-related words in English–diapers, baby carrier, bottle, and stroller. Upstairs, in a class set up like a hospital room, students practice nursing skills on mannequins, checking blood pressure and temperature. Elsewhere, staff help clients prepare for citizenship exams. The folks at the International Institute of Minnesota have been assisting immigrants, refugees, and asylees for a century. In 2018 alone, they worked with 3,722 New Americans from 104 countries! That’s something to celebrate in this centennial year.
PDF of K. Hanson article