World Refugee Day may have passed, but now is the time to continue the conversation! Switchboard’s resource library hosts a wide range of community engagement resources, including new materials developed by Switchboard on community resource mapping and leveraging community feedback.

If you’d like customized support on community engagement, consider submitting a technical assistance request to Switchboard!

Building Community Collaborations

• Community Resource Mapping Templates
  Switchboard, 2019
  Refugee integration is a dynamic, two-way process in which refugees and the receiving society work together to build secure, vibrant, and cohesive communities. Community resource mapping, the process of identifying and aligning assets within a defined area to accomplish stated objectives, strengthens refugee integration. It does this through the engagement of community members, the cultivation of new partnerships, the coordination of services, and the access of community resources. These templates are intended to support you in your community resource mapping process.
• Building and Sustaining Community Collaborations for Refugee Welcome: Toolkit and Get Started Guide
  Welcoming America, 2017
  This toolkit was created to help organizations and community groups identify their current strengths and consider new strategies for expanding and deepening their collaborations in order to promote welcoming communities. The get started guide provides quick tips and ideas for taking the first steps.

Reaching Out and Listening

• Advancing Goals in Community Engagement: Editable Outreach Templates
  Switchboard, 2019
  This document contains three editable outreach templates: Refugees in Your City Fact Sheet, Sample Annual E-mail to Faith Communities and Bulletin Insert, and “New City Packs” Flyer. While these tools may not be appropriate for all programs or contexts, they are examples that may be edited and adapted to advance your specific community engagement goals.
• Leveraging Feedback in Community Engagement
  Switchboard, 2019
  This toolkit suggests three ways to integrate basic community feedback structures in your programs: implementing a community consultation working group, conducting an annual volunteer survey, and providing training to staff on responding to community concerns and compliments. It includes a range of tools and templates you can use to integrate these three approaches into your work.
• Stand Together: Messaging About Muslims and Refugees in Challenging Times
  Welcoming America, 2016
  This guide was created for advocates, service providers, and supporters as a tool to address the backlash toward refugees and Muslim Americans, and to help you proactively engage with community leaders and neighbors. The messages, sample conversations, story ideas, and worksheets in this toolkit will help you develop straightforward yet persuasive language to use in spoken or written communications to support the needs of your whole community, including immigrants, refugees, and Muslim Americans.

Promoting Wellness through Community Engagement

• Promoting Refugee and Community Wellness
  National Partnership for Community Training and Welcoming America, 2018
  This toolkit explores the connections between wellness and welcoming communities. Created in partnership by the National Partnership for Community Training and Welcoming America, it focuses on how those from diverse sectors – such as academics, employers, health providers, and neighbors – can create a vibrant ecosystem that supports refugee and community wellness.
• Community Engagement – Effective Messaging and Trauma-Informed Care Approaches
  National Partnership for Community Training, 2017
  This guide explores welcoming communities, offers recommendations on how to engage the private sector, and discusses how communities can implement trauma-informed care practices and ultimately contribute to refugee mental health and well-being.
• Recorded Webinar: Group Work with Survivors of Torture: Engaging Communities
  Center for Victims of Torture, 2017
  This recorded webinar reviews what survivors of torture (SoT) programs can do to create their own group interventions and to collaborate with other organizations to facilitate interventions in the larger community. It examines what kind of consultative oversight may work for your organization and how distance supervision can facilitate these group endeavors.