BRYCS What’s New Updates for May 2021

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

• Refugee Admissions goal raised to 62.5k! Refugee Council USA has compiled a short social media toolkit to celebrate the news! #RestoringWelcome
• May is National Foster Care Month! The USCCB/MRS Foster Care team is honored to have the opportunity to work with an incredible Foster Care network that is dedicated to finding safe and loving homes for unaccompanied migrant youth. Through this last year, the network has navigated many changes, while always leaning into its strengths and collective knowledge. Follow the Justice of Immigrants (JFI) Facebook and Twitter pages to see the Foster Care Month social media campaign and check out the new resource and training page on BRYCS. This training page will allow foster parents to access and complete USCCB/MRS trainings.
• HAVE YOU / DO YOU WORK WITH THE MAYA FROM GUATEMALA OR MEXICO? Ten years ago, Bridging Refugee Youth and Children’s Services (BRYCS) and the Maya Heritage Community Project at Kennesaw State University (KSU) collaborated to create the Maya Toolkit for Medical Providers. The Toolkit creation involved dozens of key Maya participants from various language groups, without whose help the project would not have been possible. The Toolkit aims to help medical providers identify health care barriers and create resources to bridge the gap.We are now interested in finding out who has used the Toolkit, how useful it is, and how we might update and improve it. To that end, BRYCS and KSU have developed a short online survey. The survey should take no more than 10 minutes of your time. If you have worked with Maya and either used or not used the Toolkit before, please help by telling us about your experiences with the Toolkit or your initial impressions of the Toolkit.  
• Vaccines and Ramadan, from the The National Resource Center for Refugees, Immigrants and Migrants (NRC-RIM), is a series of videos and other resources about Ramadan and COVID-19 vaccines featuring faith leaders addressing potential questions or concerns from members of Muslim communities.
• Youth Mentoring, a program of Refugee Services of Texas-Austin, aims to coach and empower refugee youth, age 15-24, to reach their personal, professional, and education goals via one-on-one relationships with a community volunteer mentor.

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EVENTS/CALL FOR PAPERS

• Managing Your Biases Live Stream Course, from the Florida Center from Cultural Competence, Inc., will take place May 3, 2021 at 3-5PM EDT. Laugh, uncover unconscious thoughts about others, and recognize the human tendency to divide the world into “us” and “them” and devalue “them”.
• CWLA 2021 Virtual Conference: Lessons Learned from 2020: Reaching New Heights for Children and Families, will take place May 4-6, 2021. The conference schedule and sessions will be published online soon.
• Welcoming Interactive, Welcoming America’s annual conference, will take place virtually May 5-6, 2021. The focus of this year’s event will be on inclusion best practices, with applications in emergency management and preparedness, community building, and immigration.
• Anti-Trafficking Webinar: SOAR to Health and Wellness, a free two-hour training, hosted by the Postgraduate Institute for Medicine, the Administration for Children and Families’ Office on Trafficking in Persons, and the HHS Office on Women’s Health, will take place May 19, 2021 at 1PM ET. The training aims to teach providers how to identify and respond to human trafficking. Continuing education credits are available for physicians, pharmacists, psychologists, nurses, dentists, social workers, public health professionals, and health education specialists.
• Save the date! The 2021 National Immigrant Integration Conference (NIIC)will take place October 2-8, 2021 in Las Vegas, Nevada. NIIC is the largest conference on immigration in the U.S. and plays a central role in the powerful, diverse and broad immigrant and refugee rights and integration field.

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FUNDING

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RESOURCES

For Refugee/Immigrant Children & Youth

• Lailah’s Lunchbox: A Ramadan Story tells the story of a young girl in a new school in a new country, thousands of miles from her old home, and missing her old friends. When Ramadan begins, she is excited that she is finally old enough to participate in the fasting but worried that her classmates won’t understand why she doesn’t join them in the lunchroom. This website also contains free printables such as Arabic letter coloring sheets. Recommended for grades 1-7. (Description from source)
• Ramadan In The Classroom & At Home Learn, a blog post from Language Lizard, includes a lesson plan, story book, information on food and arts and crafts, and more!
• CCC – Change the Conversation Challenge!, a project of the global campaign “Shaping Narratives on Migrants and Migration” of the United Nations Major Group of Children and Youth, will award young leaders and youth-led organizations to share their experience/ ideas on how to reshape narratives on migration, fighting stereotypes and xenophobia. The first prize is $500USD and the deadline is May 10^th, 2021.

General Cultural Competency & Migration & Resettlement Awareness

• UNPROTECTED: Chin IDPs in Chin and Rakhine States, Myanmar/Burma from the Chin Association of Maryland, outlines the context of persecution against Chins in southern Chin State and Rakhine State in Myanmar/Burma. It especially focuses on the threats to their security and poor humanitarian conditions resulting from the ongoing violence. It also describes how they have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. (Description from source)
• Building Effective Migration Management Capacity in Mexico and Central America, from Migration Policy Institute (MPI), examines migration management in Mexico and Central America, and the growing government attention to migration functions, enhanced immigration enforcement, increased investments in asylum systems and existing protection frameworks, as well as labor migration policies. (Description from source)

Cultural Orientation/Integration

• Engaging Public-Sector Stakeholders to Prepare for Welcoming More Refugees, an information guide from Switchboard TA, explores strategies for meaningfully re-engaging public-sector stakeholders, whether looking to collaborate with public schools, public health departments, or other public actors. This includes creative virtual activities to lay the groundwork for public-sector collaboration in community consultation or other public stakeholder settings. A supplemental webinar is also available. (Description from source)
• Supporting Clients During Times of Economic Hardship: Doing Job Development in an Economic Recession, an information guide from Switchboard TA, offers practical suggestions and program examples to help employment staff uncover meaningful career opportunities for clients, and to strengthen employer connections, when the economy is struggling. (Description from source)

Child Welfare/Family Strengthening

• Increasing Numbers of Unaccompanied Alien Children at the Southwest Border, from the Congressional Research Service (CRS),provides further details on the increasing number of UACs arriving to the U.S. within the first six months of FY21.
• Best Practices Guide for Working with Karen, Nepali-Bhutanese, Oromo, and Somali Families in Child Welfare: Second Edition, from the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare (CASCW), is intended as an overview of selected topics that are relevant to providing culturally responsive services to families with refugee backgrounds and understanding their unique needs. General themes were identified through a literature review and interviews with refugee families. The term ‘refugee’ is a broad category that encompasses an extremely diverse group of people with unique cultures, histories, and experiences. (Description from source)

Education

• Classroom Instruction That Works with English Language Learners: Student Learning Strategies, a self-paced course from McRel International, was created for classroom teachers and EL specialists and gives practical information on the five stages of language acquisition and instructional strategies teachers can use at each stage to help their students progress toward fluency.
• Good Schools and Classrooms for Children Learning English, an IDRA rubric, aims to help people in schools and communities evaluate five dimensions that are necessary for success: school indicators, student outcomes, leadership, support, and programmatic and instructional practices.
• Educating English Learners during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Policy Ideas for States and School Districts, a report from Migration Policy Institute (MPI), stresses the importance of strengthening parent engagement, including language access (interpretation and translation).
• Toxic Stress and Well-being among Students Affected by Forced Migration, a new e-course from the International Rescue Committee (IRC) and New Jersey Office for Refugees’, aims to teach participants about common experiences associated with forced migration, how toxic stress affects children and youth, and key ways that effects of toxic stress can be mitigated within Healing Learning Spaces, including classrooms, schools, and out-of-school time program environments. A supplemental webinar introducing the course is also available along with  IRC’s Safe and Learning Healing Spaces Toolkit.

Health/Mental Health

• “Risk of Childhood Psychiatric Disorders in Children of Refugee Parents with Post-traumatic Stress Disorder”, from The Lancet Public Health, aims to determine whether parental PTSD is associated with childhood psychiatric morbidity among children of refugees.
• COVID-19 Vaccine Informational Videos for Refugee Communities, from Church World Service (CWS), aim to ensure refugee and immigrant communities have access to clear and correct information about the COVID vaccines. Currently available in English, Arabic, Nepali, Swahili and Spanish with more translations forthcoming.
• “Protecting the Global Mental Health of Forcibly Displaced Children from the COVID-19 Pandemic”, from Pediatrics, describes the synergistic impact of government policy responses and psychosocial stress on the mental health of forcibly displaced children and families and recommend risk mitigation strategies to improve safety, psychosocial environments, and mental health for this populations. (Description from source)

Anti-Trafficking

• Toolkit for Building Survivor-Informed Organizations, a toolkit from the National Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance Center, aims to support anti-trafficking organizations, coalitions, task forces, volunteer programs, and other organizations who support those impacted by human trafficking.

Program Development

• Community-Led COVID-19 Messaging: Practical Tools for Building Hyperlocal Custom Communications, an archived webinar from Switchboard TA and The National Resource Center for Refugees, Immigrants and Migrants (NRC-RIM), has community leaders discussing their experiences with this messaging approach and shares two tools:
  • Community-Led Messaging for COVID-19 Contact Tracing Guidebook
  • Guidebook for COVID-19 Vaccine Messaging
  • MakeSpace, a tool for public health professionals and community-based organizations to make customized vaccine messaging that meets the needs of their local communities.