The RIC began as a community adjustment support group for refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo that met through the UNC Refugee Mental Health and Wellness Initiative. They started meeting in January 2015 and became an official nonprofit in April 2016.
The RIC received the ethnic community self-help grant from the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement. The grant will give them half a million dollars over three years.
Amy Shipow, board member and assistant treasurer for the nonprofit, helped outline a two-part program that would be funded by the grant.
“What the grant does, it’s two-fold,” she said. “The first is we’re hiring internally six refugees; four will be peer leaders and two will be employment specialists.
Shipow said the employment specialists will help their peers find jobs by going into the community, helping them write strong applications and doing on-the-job training.
The second part of the plan, Shipow said, focuses on round table meetings that gather the newly hired peer leaders and community leaders, such as resettlement agencies, financial literacy experts and GED candidates at community colleges.
In the meetings, the leaders would choose topics to develop curriculums that can be taught to immigrants in their native languages.
“The goal is that employment will be by refugees, with refugees and for refugees and will hopefully lead to higher skilled employment,” Shipow said. “That will be empowering because a lot of refugees have identified as one of their primary needs that employment opportunities are really limited for them because degree transferability from their own country is really hard in the U.S.”
