Community Science has been at the forefront in advancing the field of immigrant integration by contributing to the understanding of the changing landscape of the U.S., defining what healthy integration of immigrants and refugees is, and studying how community-building strategies can contribute to immigrant integration, to name a few. The following are several of Community Science’s recent projects:
Community Science has been working with the World Education, Inc. (WEI), which is leading the Adult Education and Immigrant Integration: Networks for Integrating New Americans with the support of U.S. Department of Education Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education. The project targets linguistic, civic, and economic integration of adult immigrants by providing technical assistance (TA) on program and network development to place-based immigrant integration initiatives in six communities. Community Science serves as one of the TA providers, specifically providing TA on data and evaluation. We also work with WEI to document the TA work and the changes in the communities.
“Community Science has been a valuable partner in the national Networks for Integrating New Americans initiative, helping to co-author the theoretical framework and design the documentation plan,” Silja Kallenbach, Project Director for the initiative and Vice President of World Education’s U.S. Division.
Community Science also worked with the Lutheran Immigrant and Refugee Services (LIRS), which is one of the refugee resettlement agencies working with the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement on several projects in 2014. In one of the major projects, Community Science worked closely with the Children’s Services Unit staff at LIRS to identify immigrant and refugee integration outcomes and measures for their target population. We developed and conducted a learning session for the Children’s Services Unit on immigrant and refugee integration frameworks focusing on immigrant and refugee children’s experience, which led to continuous internal discussions about how to better align the unit’s work in the bigger picture of integration.
