Planning Grant: New American Africans

 Building Community Based Leadership and After School Programs

for/with Immigrants and Refugees of New Hampshire

Grant received from The New Hampshire Endowment for Health: Oct 2012 – June 2013

Project Goal Statement:

To increase the capacity of New American Africans to promote community leadership and implement after school programs that reinforce cultural identity, community strengths based solutions, and understanding of both concerns and hopes in immigrant and refugee communities. New American Africans will develop an organizational plan for building strong networks of support that will improve “sense of community belonging”, cultural identity, parent leadership and social/academic success for children in the immigrant/refugee communities of greater Manchester and Concord, NH.

Connecting with Immigrants and Refugees in New Hampshire

            This grant has been a focal point for many activities that have grown out of my work with New American Africans and the community with which this organization works. Families primarily from the Burundi, DRC and Rwanda have engaged in this effort to build a strong community group capable of addressing some of the “resettlement” and “post resettlement” challenges of these communities.

            Manchester, NH has become the resettlement site for over 2000 refugees in the past decade. Refugees from the African Great Lakes Region were among the early waves of refugees resettled in the state. While many have learned to navigate American institutions, jobs and schools for their children there are numerous challenges, particularly for those who have not picked up English as quickly. As we began to meet with people to build this African community organization we discovered that those most committed to our efforts came with limited experience and understanding of the organizational planning efforts that we hoped to develop. Most did not speak English or read and write in any language and they came wanting to address the more immediate challenges of their lives. They expressed a wish to meet more frequently than planned and to engage in conversations with people from community resources that are often difficult to navigate.

            As we listened carefully and began to facilitate dialogue related to “building a plan”, I struggled to negotiate responsibility to the institutional grant requirements and the needs and wishes of this community. I realized, with many reminders from my co-facilitator, that my determination to develop a long term plan would get in the way of the community coming together in the most authentic and self-empowering manner and yet I also knew that we had a responsibility to address the goals of this “planning grant”. The community preferred to “grow”, or “build” their ideas rather than plan in a linear way. Grasping for data I could document to fit “planning goals” I recently asked the group “what do you tell people about this group? How would you explain why it is important?” One of the men began to weave his explanation into our meeting. “We are building a home. We will build a strong foundation, and when people see that strong foundation they will each bring their bricks to build a strong house.” Others in the group nodded in agreement adding their part to this story. It became clear to me that they would not be creating a strategic plan in ways that were familiar to The Endowment For Health. I found I had to be creative in my translation of goals and ideas that were more process oriented than goal oriented.

The participants in the community group requested that we organize meetings with law enforcement and the Department of Health and Human Services to discuss some of the difficulties they face with these resource. Prior to these meetings we worked to gather stories and information that the community hoped to cover. This helped us to guide the information being shared, and to create opportunities for community members to contribute more effectively to the conversation. Often speakers from community services arrive with an agenda and neglect to ask the community about their specific concerns. These conversations were very productive and the community has asked to make this a regular part of the organizational plan.

Visual Facilitation

In an effort to bridge the gap of language and literacy we began using a visual facilitation approach to keeping notes and reporting back to the group. After weeks of looking over the timeline that was growing to represent our work, we had a newcomer to the group. We asked one of our most regular participants to explain to the young Congolese man, who had only recently arrived in the U.S. what we have been doing and why the organization is important. He explained in Kirundi. My co-facilitator reported to me later that he did a very good job and that he covered every detail of the timeline we had created. This reassured us that our efforts to represent our note keeping visually, and reporting our progress in a storytelling manner rather than a report had paid off.