Refugee Integration Work Group
Refugee Integration in the United States is central to all services designed to welcome new comers and assist them to contribute at their highest level to our vibrant---and complex culture.
Designing tools and strategies with service providers, refugee communities, community leaders and funders will ensure the best match for refugee families and a new life which allows them to be the highest contributor they can be—quickly.
Wilson-Fish Alternative Projects
Ethnic Community Based Organization Strategies
Refugee Agriculture Partnership Projects
Refugee Microenterprise Programs
Refugee Assed Development Programs
And more…
ISED works with premier service providers, state offices of refugee resettlement, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), US State Department Bureau of Population Resettlement Management, US Department of Agriculture, the Mott Foundation and many other public and private leaders and investors to design and implement effective strategies and standards.
Program Abstract
How refugees and the communities in which they resettle are working to toward integration has become a primary objective of many resettlement sites around the U.S. Refugee social service providers, state and community governments, and the Office of Refugee Resettlement in the Administration for Children and Families at the Department of Health and Human Services are expressed a growing interest in identifying facilitators of integration and barriers to integration.
Project Overview
In June of 2006, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) requested that ISED develop a work plan to staff, facilitate, and manage the development and processes of an Integration Work Group (IWG), and to produce a report for the ORR Consultation in January 2007. Click here to read the full report. In 2009, ORR asked ISED to continue its work in series of four site visit case studies to identify promising practices in integration and to provide additional recommendations. The report on the case study site visits, promising practices, and recommendations is due to be published in the summer of 2009.
Profile of Beneficiaries
Any agency or individual interested in the ways new communities integrate the foreign born populations will benefit from this project. As the final report is published in the summer of 2009, ORR, states, and local communities will be interested in reading and considering some of the promising practices identified by the site visit teams.
ISED is also available to consult with states and local communities that wish to develop a state-wide or community-wide integration plan. We are willing to develop a fee for services with interested clients. Our services include:
- Facilitating planning meetings and sessions
- Conducting literature reviews of integration efforts in the U.S. and abroad
- Preparing annotated bibliographies for leadership training in integration
- Assessment of state and community integration efforts and plans
- Providing keynote speakers for community events that focus on the integration of newcomers
- Planning and facilitating integration activities and workshops
Project Activities
ISED worked with the Office of Refugee Resettlement to provide technical assistance that includes the following:
- Staffing and developing a work plan for the ORR appointed Integration Work Group (IWG)
- Working with ORR to identify and select sites and site visit team members for each site.
- Developing focus group and community meeting guides
- With ORR and the IWG, identifying four sites for case study visits and identifying site visit teams to conduct research using qualitative methods such as focus groups, community meetings, meetings with political leaders and elected officials, meetings with employers, with foundations, with health care providers, with educators, with spiritual leaders, with students, with refugees, and with native born residents
- Drafting the report on behalf of the four case study site visit teams
Upcoming events
Release of the report on the case study site visits in the summer of 2009
Period
September 30, 2006 through September 29, 2009
Funder
Office of Refugee Resettlement
Project Manager
Peggy Moon Gilbert
