The Riverview International Center on the North Side helps immigrants in the neighborhood learn how to live in America thanks to the work of Kirsta Benedetti.
The small apartment carries a big title: Riverview International Center.
Located in an apartment complex on Riverview Drive, just south of OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital on the North Side, it’s where immigrants from the neighborhood come to learn how to live in America.
They come seeking driving lessons, English instruction, job leads, rides to a doctor’s office. They come to pose elementary questions to someone who won’t make them feel foolish for asking.
The center (riverviewinternationalcenter.org) was founded in 2015 by Kirsta Benedetti, a Columbus artist who spent a few years in Egypt, an experience that made her understand “what it felt like to go from being a very competent, independent person ... to feeling helpless.”
After returning to the United States, she learned about Riverview Drive, a street of about 1,000 apartments, most of them occupied by immigrants from Algeria, Bangladesh, Egypt, Syria, Iraq Sudan, Morocco, India and the Palestinian territories.
Bruce Bernard, who owns 90 of the apartments on the street, agreed to rent Benedetti a 650-square-foot apartment, plus some basement utility space, so she could establish an immigrant-help center.
Bernard said it was both a business and a religious decision: His Christian faith teaches him to welcome the stranger.
Affordable rents, a nearby mosque and the prospect of meeting others who speak their language attract immigrants to the street. As immigrants — not refugees — they qualify for little, if any, government aid. Almost without exception they say that they came to America because they want a better life for their children — or the children they hope to have.
On a recent weekday night, I watched as they streamed in and out of the center, where adults were studying for their citizenship test, students were getting homework help and a volunteer was leading the youngest children in craft activities.
It wasn’t always so busy. Benedetti spent some lonely days early on, waiting for people to respond to her offers of assistance. But word of mouth slowly built the clientele. Last year, the center had more than 5,000 visits.
“Very, very helpful for many people,” said Palestinian immigrant Amir, 35.
Tania, who immigrated from Bangladesh, said the center helped her set up medical care, get rides to appointments and keep her 10-year-old on track with homework.
More than that, it helps recent arrivals feel a little less alone.
The center, a nonprofit organization, charges nothing for its services. Clients tend to express their gratitude in food, small gifts from their native countries and heartfelt expression.
Benedetti was driving a Bangladeshi woman to an appointment once when the woman tearfully summed it all up:
“You know,” Benedetti recalls her saying, “America is very different and very hard. But you make all us foreigners into a big family. Thank you.”
Joe Blundo is a columnist for The Dispatch.
