Understanding the Challenge
One-quarter of all children under the ages of eighteen across developing nations have an immigrant parent. Finding ways to facilitate their flourishing and successful social inclusion is both a demographic and a democratic imperative. Xenophobia and myths about immigration are on the rise. Inside and outside of classrooms, misunderstandings about newcomers sew division, undermining social, economic, and democratic prospects for us all. Despite the rapid growth in the number of children and youth from immigrant families and the challenging circumstances they face, many adults that serve them do not understand them or feel ill-prepared to serve their needs. We can, and need to, do better.
Our Mission
Our mission is to help young people develop the knowledge, empathy and mindsets that prepare them for informed civic participation that ensures the advancement of inclusive and welcoming communities. We achieve this by ensuring that migration is understood as a shared condition of our past, present, and future.
Our Approach
Given the rapid growth in the number of children and youth from immigrant families and the difficult circumstances they face, neither ignoring the situation nor addressing it with ad hoc solutions is an option. We have developed a fresh, new perspective on migration, recognizing it as one of our most basic human experiences; a new promising practices network of networks, to enable this perspective to be adopted widely and effectively in schools, informal educational settings, and social change organizations; and a robust national campaign addressing this new perspective to positively re-message migration in a way that fosters the academic, social, and emotional needs of immigrant-origin and their peers.
To this urgent work, we bring an accomplished record of research and effective program implementation, a growing network of networks, a nimble approach that allows us to pilot, test, scale, and disseminate strategies of understanding and empowerment.
We know that we can’t do this work alone. We have forged active partnerships and collaborations with organizations that reach over 12 million young people a year. Both the depth and breadth of our work is expanding. By 2025, our work will reach approximately half of the school-aged students in the United States.
By providing tools and professional learning for educators, we are nurturing current and future generations with the knowledge, empathy and mindsets that sustain inclusive and welcoming communities.