Rabiou Manzo: Boise’s kind man for unkind times
by MARLENE FRITZ INTERNATIONAL
CLIENTS that Rabiou Manzo ’03 (M.S., Animal Science) greets at the Boise airport aren’t here for business meetings.
Numbering several hundred annually, they’re fleeing violent conflict and religious, ethnic, and political persecution in some of the world’s most dangerous places—primarily Iraq, Burma, and Bhutan but also Burundi, Congo, Togo, Liberia, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan.
As a U.S. program specialist for the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) Boise regional office, Manzo connects his refugee clients with available assistance programs, matches them with landlords, arranges medical appointments and English instruction, helps children start school and parents find work, and guides and encourages the families’ transitions to a new world and renewed lives.
Within eight months, they’re expected to be self-sufficient. “Once I see them working, paying their bills, buying houses, and navigating the U.S. system to the point that they can give back to the community, I can call it success,” says Manzo. In the meantime, he’s “patient—very, very patient.”
Rabiou Manzo ’03 (on right)
Global focus: Worldwide, Boise
“My philosophy is to have faith and everything
will work out. Nothing comes true the first time. It’s step by step.”
A father of two whose wife is fellow graduate student Juanita Sosa Manzo, he grew up in Niger, speaks five languages, and earned a veterinary science degree in Ukraine before his own 2000 arrival at the UI.
He was herdsman for a 2,500-cow Treasure Valley dairy when his volunteer Russian-translation efforts for the local World Relief office brought his talents to the attention of Leslye Moore.
Now Manzo’s boss, Moore successfully nominated him last year for the IRC’s Sarlo Foundation Distinguished Humanitarian Service Award—one of five granted annually worldwide.
“Rabiou has been exceptional at developing resources in the community,” Moore says. “Generosity, humor, and service define him.” The economic upheaval that has shaken Americans is challenging his clients as well. “A year ago it was easy to place them in factories, grocery stores, hospitals, restaurants, and cleaning jobs, but it’s more difficult now,” says Manzo. So he’s using his familiarity with agriculture to place them on dairy farms as far away as Boardman, Oregon.
Amin Ahmadzadeh helped and mentored Manzo as he initially tiptoed, then strode, through his CALS Animal and Veterinary Science graduate program.
“My philosophy is to have faith and everything will work out,” says Manzo. “Nothing comes true the first time. It’s step by step.”
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