What We Do
The Center for Intercultural Organizing is a membership organization that leads grassroots efforts to protect and expand immigrant and refugee rights through education, civic engagement and policy advocacy, community organizing and mobilization, and intergenerational leadership development.
Grounded in the belief that organizing people who are suffering oppression has the greatest potential to affect the root causes of economic, political and social injustice, we involve our immigrant and refugee members in all aspects of program development and implementation. In addition, the Center provides the non-immigrant community explicit strategies for being good allies.
CIO’s Program Areas
Our programs, both internal and external, offer a safe space for cross-cultural dialogue, analysis, strategy building and organizing that foster long-term alliances between immigrant and refugee communities. The Center for Intercultural Organizing integrates four critical areas that, when combined, catalyze systemic change:
- Community Education—The Center educates immigrants, refugees and U.S.-born allies on pressing community issues and strengthens and supports existing efforts to bring visibility to immigrant and refugee struggles.
- Civic Engagement and Policy Advocacy—Our civic engagement program provides a pathway for immigrants and refugees to participate in democratic processes through training programs, hands-on projects and collective action that produce concrete improvements in their lives through policy change.
- Organizing and Mobilization—The Center assists immigrant and refugee community members in building the organizing skills necessary to impact policies that affect them and to work collaboratively, mobilizing diverse constituencies.
- Intergenerational Leadership Development—The Center develops new leaders throughout our various internal and external programs.
