Get to Know Carrine Bury

For Carrine Bury, Lead Outreach Coordinator and Outreach Worker at the Department of Human Service Programs’ Community Learning Center (CLC), outreach is a way of giving back.

As the outreach worker for the Haitian community on the Community Engagement Team (CET), Bury works closely with members of the community, many of whom are families with young children and who are often recent immigrants, to help them navigate living in Cambridge and accessing information, programs, and services.

“People come here, they are new, they are immigrants, and they don’t know how to get resources. They don’t know how to search for resources. They are here, a little bit lost,” Bury said. “So they need someone to guide them and tell them, ‘This is where you can pay this. This is where you can learn English. This is where you can find food if you don’t have enough food. This is how to apply for a food pantry, health insurance, or school.’ And even to support them if they receive a paper and don’t know how to read it.”

Bury and the other outreach workers on the CET, who each work with a particular linguistic community, collaborate with a variety of other agencies across Cambridge to help them best reach their communities. Referred to as technical assistance, this includes supporting these organizations in designing programming and communication that is clear and accessible and explaining how different communities will understand different messaging.

“We support any agency that is doing something to support Cambridge residents … They come to us and say, ‘We have this program that we are doing for kids, but immigrants don’t know about that,” Bury said. “So we help them. They come to our meeting and explain their program and what services they offer. After listening to them, we tell them … ‘for my community, this is what you should do [and] what you shouldn’t do.’”

The CET also partners closely with Cambridge Public Schools (CPS). Bury explains that CPS will ask the CET to reach out to families in their own language to share important information, from back-to-school events to parent-teacher conferences. Additionally, Bury helps families navigate the language barrier throughout various school processes and often attends meetings or events with parents to provide support if they feel uncomfortable.

“Sometimes it’s not about translating. You can send a paper translated to a family, but they still don’t understand what you’re saying,” Bury said. “Because as part of Haitian culture, I know after translation, [it matters] the way you say something so that they will better engage.”

Bury knows firsthand the impact the CLC’s programs can have on members of the community, especially new residents. When she first immigrated from Haiti, where she had been a principal, she spoke limited English, and she began taking classes at the CLC, including a family literacy class.

“Not speaking English was scary for me. Not being able to work because I don’t speak the language was scary. At first, I started taking an English class somewhere in school while I was waiting to get to the Community Learning Center,” Bury said. “When I entered the Community Learning Center, my kids were young, and I was able to get to the family literacy class for people with kids where you can bring your kids and they give you childcare.”

Eventually, she began working at the CLC herself, and as the program expanded, she became the first full-time outreach worker on the CET.

“Everybody’s found that it’s a good program; everybody wants a piece of the CET to support them in their program. And families are asking [about it] and it is expanding,” Bury said. “I became the first full-time outreach worker, and now we have two full-time and we have a lot more outreach workers serving different communities.”

To Bury, the best and most meaningful part of her job is getting to see the impact of her outreach on residents, sometimes years after she first met them. She mentioned how two months ago, someone she had not heard from in several years stopped by to visit.

“She said, ‘I’m working now. I have a job. I have my kids in school and we are doing well and I come to say thank you. If it wasn’t for you supporting me, I wouldn’t be able to do it,’” Bury recalled. “When you have that, it’s not about gifts, I don’t need gifts, it’s not about money, but it’s finding someone that said thank you, and you see where the person was before, and what the person is doing now. It’s really rewarding and there is no better feeling than to see you helped someone and they go on and they are happy.”

Bury says this sentiment is shared among all the outreach workers on the CET.

“If you ask any outreach worker, I’m pretty sure they would say, ‘I want to give back to my community for what I received when I came here, because if it wasn’t for someone that supported me … I wouldn’t be able to be where I am now,’” she said. “That’s why they all enjoy what they are doing and are happy to go a long way and do more than what they are asked to do to support families.”

Bury enjoys living in Cambridge and connecting with different communities in the city, including at her church and an elderly housing building near her home, where she often visits elderly residents to spend time with them and help them feel less isolated. She says Cambridge as a whole is a very welcoming and supportive community and she loves helping new residents access all the city has to offer.

“It’s a good city that has a lot of support for kids. It’s a mix of community and it’s a welcoming city. Cambridge is really, really welcoming. And you find a lot of support,” Bury said.