BOSTON – Dr. Ridiane Denis doesn’t hesitate when asked what she wants people to know about the Haitian migrants looking for work in Massachusetts. “I want them to know they are hard workers,” Denis said.
With thousands of Haitian people moving into Massachusetts and migrant shelters filling up, she felt compelled to help. The idea for a volunteer-led job training program came to her in a brainstorming session at her kitchen table with her partner, Guichard Rodriguez. In 2023, she founded the non-profit Massachusetts Integrative Resources . The word integrate, she says, is central to the group’s mission. “If you’re from somewhere else, you want to be integrated,” she said. Once she established MAIR, she put out the word that she was ready to begin training migrants for direct support personnel positions-jobs in group homes, day programs, and assisting the elderly.
Dr. Denis is Director of Clinical Research and Operations, General Clinical Research Unit (GCRU) at Boston University Medical Campus. (She is also a mother of four sons who is only half-joking when she says she works 30 hours a day.) With volunteers ready to help and migrants eager to learn, all she needed was a training space. That quest led her to Waltham and a kindred spirit in Gabriel Vonleh, CEO of Opportunities for Inclusion.