Helping
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Nitza Rubenstein’s hospitality goes beyond running a restaurant.
The owner of Fajitas Bar and Grill is part social worker, welcome wagon, translator and teacher. If Rubenstein, who was born in Honduras, sees a need in the lives of new Latino families in the area, she finds a resource to help.
“People realize that she’s going to help them. Word gets around and people come to her. She has the vision,” said Denise Firman, who is a restaurant patron but also donated guitars and a ukulele to Rubenstein to give to young people hoping to play an instrument. “She’s a very magnetic person.”
Rubenstein, 56, sees people struggling and wants to help, she said. She knows what it is like to come to America with nothing, a trip she made 33 years ago. “They don’t have any other place to go and ask for help,” she said.
She’s driven Spanish-speaking newcomers to doctors’ appointments and to the immigration office and court hearings. She has connected them with lawyers and encouraged them to get immunizations. She’s handed out clothes, toys, diapers, winter gear, beds and brought in Santa Claus for a Christmas party. She opens her restaurant to English classes each Wednesday evening, hosting about 30 adult students and their families.
Rubenstein doesn’t do it alone, but she wrangles up resources and is supported by the Bienvenidos a Brookings and other organizations, including the Central Plains Mennonite Conference in Freeman.
“Nitza is often their first and most important contact,” said Jeanne Jones Manzer, who is with Bienvenidos a Brookings and a Flandreau native. “She’s just incredible.”
Manzer and others from the group come to English classes to help with conversations and to provide for some of the needs of families. Recently, the group provided backpacks filled with supplies for children going to school during a night of celebration because the Spanish speakers had passed the first English test.