Bishop-supported leadership training for immigrants transforms parish communities

Civity brings people together for trust-building workshops that are built around storytelling, with the goal of helping people from different backgrounds find common ground with others in their communities. One study found the organization’s approach to be more effective than other strategies designed to build trust and address political discord.

The Philos Action League dispatches Christian volunteers to offer support and solidarity to Jewish communities when antisemitic attacks occur. The organization has more than 2,000 volunteers who have responded to 128 incidents since 2021.

Virginia Tech's civic engagement program, Hokies Vote, has successfully increased its student voting rate by roughly 25 percent through educational outreach, community dialogue events, and setting up a polling place on campus.

When city planners rushed early in the pandemic to close streets to automobile traffic in order to give residents a safe space to roam outdoors, they ended up learning lessons entirely apart from their original goals rooted in public health and traffic safety. In Durham, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Oakland, community groups pushed back at the cities' initial failures to consider the opinions of communities of color whose neighborhoods were affected by the changes. The pushback led to collaborations and modified plans that redefined the problems at issue and the ways to address them.

Botswanans have deprioritized deeply held tribal identities, created a national identity, and found societal stability by using the practice of randomly assigning civil servants to different parts of the country. Sending the over 120,000 civil servants to work away from friends and family, immersed in a new culture, has led to intercultural exchanges, new friendships, and even many marriages that resulted in children whose parents belong to different tribes. Increasing contact across tribal groups led to thousands of new personal relationships, which reduced prejudices and created a shared national culture.

Guide Invisibili is an audio storytelling initiative by Laboratorio 53 that increases understanding of Rome’s refugee and immigrant communities. 40 young people, who left their home countries due to conflicts and instability, record their perceptions of the city and point out similarities between life in their home cities and Rome. The free audio tours include moderated discussions with the storytellers and are opportunities to break down barriers, especially with anti-immigrant sentiments and racially motivated attacks increasing. Despite not being well known, 2,500 people have participated.

One way that any ordinary citizen can lend a hand to the plight of those caught in the American immigration system is by being a court observer: someone who sits in immigration court and takes notes by hand. Several organizations are working to develop a standardized way of evaluating judges' treatment of migrants to put it in a central database so that the data can be used to evaluate the human impact by the system as a whole. People who participate testify to the job alleviating despair over the situation as they can mitigate any unfair practices going unnoticed.

A small Mexican town called Pijijiapan is embracing the recent migrant crisis with open arms. When they heard that a caravan of migrants was passing through soon, the entire community pitched in to welcome them with fresh food, medicine, clothes, toys, and kindness. Residents say that they are motivated by the Catholic idea of charity and that they understand the circumstances that many migrants are fleeing.

In Philadelphia immigrants are driving population growth in the Northeast region of the city, in neighborhoods traditionally occupied by mostly white, Irish-Catholic, senior citizens. The “number of immigrants increased from 26,942 in 2000 to 48,623 in 2015, a leap of 80 percent.” However, city leaders, nonprofits, and schools are pulling in resources to help the growing immigrant population, many of whom are refugees.

Somali-Minnesotans feel that US counter terrorism programs are suspicious of them and thus not there to help. A growing number of Somali-Americans have been recruited by public programs to improve relations between Minnesota’s Somali community and government agencies.