Partners & Collaborators

Community and Civic Partners

Belonging is built by a whole community. Young people learn who they are and who they belong with in many places: the library story hour, the museum gallery, the soccer field, the after-school program, the resettlement office. Re-Imagining Migration helps the institutions in those places work together, so belonging becomes part of how a community runs.

Partner with us

The Belonging Ecosystem

A Belonging Ecosystem is the set of standing arrangements that connect a community's institutions to young people, to their families and to each other. Schools anchor it because nearly every family passes through them. Libraries, museums, parks departments, youth programs, resettlement agencies and city offices give it reach. In practice, an ecosystem looks like this:

A public library and a middle school that share a calendar and a purpose
A museum and a school district that prepare teachers together
A youth council that helps set the priorities of a community center
A resettlement agency, a university and a county office that run a program for recently arrived students together

Immigrant-origin youth are the test. One in four young people in America has an immigrant parent. When belonging holds for them, it holds for everyone, and the arrangements built for them strengthen the whole community.

The Belonging Ecosystems Fellowship

The Fellowship prepares civic and educational leaders to build a Belonging Ecosystem in their own communities. Fellows come from schools, libraries, museums, districts, universities and community organizations in 19+ states. Over a year, working with a cohort of peers, each fellow:

Investigates belonging locally, listening to young people, families and partners
Defines a plan with clear criteria for success
Builds and tests a response, then adapts it
Shares and reflects, contributing a documented project and a tool others can adapt

Fellows outside the classroom have built:

Muhammad Ali Center, Louisville. Garret McCorkle used a youth council to design shared student leadership and changes in adult practice.
University of Colorado Denver. Erica Holyoke led two educator inquiry cohorts with Denver museum partners, connecting community storytelling with teacher preparation.
A Midwest county. A county coordinator chaired her county's immigration task force, led system-wide professional learning and piloted art and photography with refugee girls.
Community mutual aid, California. Cesilia Vega-Gonzalez opened a food pantry for families affected by detention or deportation.

Local fellowships. Beginning in the 2027–28 year, we are launching local fellowships that bring the cohort model to a single city or region. Each is led by a host organization with deep local relationships and supported by local funders, with RIM providing training, tools and quality review.

The Belonging Standard

Communities set the standard. With fellows, young people and local partners, RIM is helping regions develop a shared belonging standard that schools, libraries, museums, parks departments, after-school programs and city offices can adopt and hold each other to.

Young people help write it. Through the student-led Belonging Audit, they map belonging in their schools and neighborhoods and help draft the standards their communities adopt. As regional standards take hold, what communities learn will inform a national standard.

The Belonging Standard is in development. Partners who join now help shape it.

Who we work with

Cultural institutions: Angel Island Immigration Station, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, the Muhammad Ali Center
Community and civic organizations: Welcoming America, the National Newcomer Network
National education organizations: Share My Lesson (American Federation of Teachers), the Aspen Institute, the National Council for the Social Studies
Public education: New York City Public Schools Division of Multilingual Learners, Santa Clara County Office of Education
Publishers and media: Lee & Low Books, HarperCollins, Principe Productions