Building and Sustaining Community Collaborations for Refugee Welcome:

The Community Engagement Toolkit and Get-Started Guide are resources for strengthening local collaborations between refugee serving organizations and a wide range of other potential local partners in support of refugee integration. The toolkit and guide describe how collaborations can use strategies from the Inform, Involve, and Invest platforms to improve the lives of refugees in their communities.

Browse Examples

Welcoming America has collected an archive of promising practices from the field.

Restoring Hope: National Capacity Building - Helping Torture Survivors Heal

Torture is a deliberate and systematic dismantling of a person’s identity and humanity through physical or psychological pain and suffering. Torture’s purpose is to destroy a sense of community, eliminate leaders, create a climate of fear and produce a culture of apathy.

The National Capacity Building Project is a collaboration among CVT, the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma and the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture to provide continued capacity building and training to organizations across the United States serving survivors of torture.

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Parishes Organized to Welcome Refugees (POWR) Program

MRS launched POWR in the midst of the great recession, seeking to strengthen the ability of local churches to recruit and utilize volunteers to mentor and provide other needed support to newly-arrived refugees. With job growth low and unemployment high as a result of recession, the program placed a special focus on building parish partnerships that could help refugees build their social capital and networks for finding jobs.

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City of Aurora Office of International and Immigrant Affairs

The Office of International and Immigrant Affairs was created to facilitate the successful integration of immigrants and refugees into Aurora's civic, economic and cultural life. The office oversees the development and implementation of a strategic citywide plan that engages all departments of city government regarding policy, programs and initiatives toward the local immigrant and refugee populations. This office oversees the Aurora Immigrant and Refugee Commission, Aurora International Roundtable, Aurora Global Fest and the Aurora International Cabinet.

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Seeking Refuge: Forced to Flee – A Refugee Camp Simulation

The program was created as an attempt to provide education and awareness toward the plight of refugees to the greater Catholic Community. One way to do this is through school system program days, while inviting parents of students to “work the camp” as staff. The Archdiocesan School Office is the main partner in this project as the value of recognizing a small bit of what refugees go through is expressed to both students, faculty, and parent (sometimes grandparent) volunteers.

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