Partners for Empowering Immigrant Youth

The project is a year-long effort to identify the barriers to full and successful inclusion of immigrant and refugee youth living in Greater Portland and to identify promising programs and strategies for reducing those barriers. Over the past couple of decades, as increasing numbers of immigrants and refugees become Maine residents, our communities have been faced with the challenge of helping these new groups integrate into our society. One symptom of the great challenge that this poses to communities and to immigrant families is the disproportionate number of young minority and immigrant men and women who have come into contact with the juvenile justice system.

LearningWorks, in collaboration with the Institute for Civic Leadership and Steve Wessler, founder of the Center for Preventing Hate, has been awarded a generous grant from The Hudson Foundation to manage an in-depth planning process to fully understand the problem, and design and implement programming that will be effective in empowering local immigrant and/or minority youth and reducing the number of young immigrant and/or minority youth who come into contact with the juvenile justice system.

There will be many opportunities for community involvement in the the planning initiative, including focus groups, one-on-one interviews, and community forums. For a detailed project description, click here.

Partners for Empowering Immigrant Youth is hiring a Project Director. For more information, visit our Jobs Opening page..

For more information on the Partners for Empowering Immigrant Youth project, contact Joel Russ at 775-0105 or jruss@learningworks.me.

Forms & Paperwork

» Partners for Empowering Immigrant Youth Project Description