Schaumburg immigrant program gets 2nd grant

Schaumburg and the Schaumburg Business Association have received a second annual grant of $50,000 to continue their outreach to the community's residents and workers from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Association President Laurie Stone reported to the village board Tuesday on the progress of the South Asian immigrant integration program's first year.

Though Schaumburg itself receives the grant from the Chicago Community Trust, it is the Schaumburg Business Association which has been chosen to implement it.

Last year, Schaumburg and three other Chicago-area municipalities received such grants to develop models of integrating specific immigrant populations into mainstream communities.

A 2005 survey by the U.S. Census Bureau revealed that South Asian residents made up 10 percent of the village's population, yet made up only 2 percent of the Schaumburg Business Association's members.

One of the first tasks last year was to create an advisory panel of 23 members, 17 of whom are South Asian.

The association also hired a research group from Northern Illinois University to facilitate focus groups and solicit community surveys among first- and second-generation members of immigrant families.

Work in the year ahead will include conducting surveys among the mainstream population to try to identify further obstacles to integration of the South Asian population.

If standards continue to be met, the program will be eligible for a third and final year to more actively overcome the identified obstacles.

Ngoan Le, vice president of programs for Chicago Community Trust, said she's pleased with Schaumburg's progress in the first year.

She said when she first met with the group that would implement the grant, there were no South Asian faces among them. But at her last meeting with them, about two-thirds of the members were South Asian.

She said each recipient of the immigrant integration grants has, of necessity, reached out to their target populations in different ways.

"We're pleased with the different approaches people are taking," Le said. "It's obvious that people are learning more than they anticipated at the onset of the project, and that's what it's all about."