5 minute read
LEARNING WITH AND FROM NEW AMERICANS
When immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers can fully participate in their communities, they enrich our region’s cultures, traditions and creativity. This aligns well with Grand Rapids Community Foundation’s hope to create an inclusive economy and thriving community.
With the Biden-Harris administration’s plan to increase the annual refugee admission cap from 15,000 to 125,000, grant partners like Justice for Our Neighbors and Immigrant Connection are adapting, pivoting resources and embracing new collaborations to make the greatest impact for vulnerable populations. And partners like Treetops Collective are shifting programming structures to amplify the voices and experiences of refugee leaders helping their neighbors adapt to and thrive in Kent County.
According to the Kent County Welcome Plan, the top priority for new Americans is the freedom to work in their desired profession. The plan also includes goals such as “Increase connectedness among and between communities to foster a deeper sense of belonging in Kent County” and “Connect community members to existing engagement opportunities that will help to make Kent County an inclusive place for all.” The Community Foundation’s investments with grant partners support a small piece of a broader strategy to welcome and include new Americans in Kent County.
JUSTICE FOR OUR NEIGHBORS is a national organization that provides free or low-cost immigration legal services to vulnerable immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Their clients need affordable legal representation to help them pursue citizenship, adjust immigration status, seek asylum, flee domestic violence, prepare for deportation and apply for DACA. The JFON Grand Rapids office must increase staff capacity to handle far more clients.
“With the tenfold increase in the number of refugees to be allowed into the country, we’re preparing for a significant upsurge in refugee green card applications,” says Becky Beauchamp, executive director. “Our attorneys are determining which of our clients can benefit from the recently-announced massive change in deportation policy to keep families together.”
IMMIGRANT CONNECTION at City Life Church exists to provide low-cost legal services to immigrants who need to apply for United States citizenship, green cards or family sponsorship proceedings. “We are anticipating more refugee arrivals per the new presidential guidelines, with Grand Rapids being a welcoming city to refugees and immigrants,” said Ruth Stenfors, executive director. “We are working on expanding our presence in the community. Our goal is to provide easy access to low cost immigration legal services bringing stability and strength to families, which in turn creates pathways for communities to thrive. We look forward to growing and serving more immigrants and refugees in the future.”
Immigrant Connection has grown and formed a partnership with Senior Neighbors to provide senior refugees over 60 with legal assistance to secure legal status, citizenship and family unity. This refugee assistance program also helps them secure medical waivers to continue receiving disability benefits, which may be their only source of income. Due to the intricacies of these types of cases, many private attorneys do not want to take them on.
TREETOPS COLLECTIVE partners with new American women and teen girls to help create spaces for belonging through mentoring, leadership development and a social enterprise for new neighbors. Their individualized and holistic approach helps women overcome social isolation and economic hardship.
Typically, refugee resettlement-focused institutions focus on survival, meeting basic needs and creating some sense of stability. Treetops aims to disrupt the current system to go beyond job placement and stable housing. It builds trust and ensures that resettled refugees have a voice in improving access to services and opportunities to lead from within their communities. This reimagining of the system is happening within Treetops, as well. As an organization, they are discovering new ways to center the experience of refugee leaders.
“As we continue to evolve, we have redesigned our work to be capacity builders, investors and connectors of new American women leaders. We believe that the more we play a background role for their engagement and community building, the better the work will be,” says Tarah Carnahan, executive director.
Treetops’ Concentric program hosts new American women identified as leaders in their language and cultural communities. Concentric Leaders receive leadership development training and knowledge of community resources, which prepares them for upward mobility in their careers and positions them as systems navigators and experts within their communities. These leaders respond to their communities’ needs in formal and informal ways, including working as translators, supporting parents as they navigate educational systems, cooking for new neighbors, being a first friend for new arrivals to West Michigan and more.
Grand Rapids Community Foundation asked the first cohort of Treetops Collective Concentric Leaders how they are being adaptive and responsive to the needs of women and girls they are welcoming into the community. They requested to be featured as a group. Here is a summary of their responses:
• Treetops had envisioned many ways that the Concentric program might function, but the reality of community needs has led Concentric Leaders to take some different approaches. We are all learning and growing together!
• One area of learning has been how different immigration statuses impact people differently. The types of resources needed can change depending on the process a person or family went through to arrive in West Michigan, as well as the barriers that exist to feeling a sense of belonging.
We have sought out additional resources and supports that perhaps were not as relevant to people who had immigrated as refugees but are useful to people who have arrived through other processes.
• Treetops expected that of the 20 families we would work with, roughly five would desire or need more consistent support throughout the year. We have found that from month to month we may be working with different families more intensely and that the number of families reaching out for additional help can also change quite a bit. We are committed to extending opportunities to all the women in our cohorts and responding to every need that we can.
• We have had to navigate a lower number of volunteer Cross-Cultural Partner than Treetops expected this year. We have provided feedback to Treetops about how to communicate expectations in ways that are not so rigid and allow for changing factors outside of everyone’s control. We hope this will not only limit disappointment when expectations go unfulfilled, but will also ensure that those kinds of things that do “just happen” do not lead to a mistrust of Treetops.
