Last Saturday, September 24, 2016, the Champaign-Urbana Immigration Forum held its 3rd Annual Immigrant Welcome Awards at The Urbana Free Library. There former Library board member Anh Ha Ho was honored with the 2016 Leadership Award.
Ho is the co-director of the East Central Illinois Refugee Mutual Assistance Center where she has worked for the past twenty-five years. An immigrant herself, Ho has “gone through nearly every different type of immigration status a person can go through.” A fact she credits for her ability to empathize with her clients, "I realize how difficult things are because of all th[o]se stages," she said.
A week before the awards ceremony, I got a chance to sit down with Ho and facilitate an oral history interview. During our forty minutes together she spoke with long-time friend and colleague, John Muirhead, President of the East Central Illinois Refugee Mutual Assistance Center Board of Directors, about her journey to become a United States citizen, her work with the Refugee Center, and the changing make-up of the refugee population in Champaign County.
This interview is now housed in our catalog, Local History Online, and you can listen to it in its entirety online.
- Sherrie B., Archives Librarian