As the next step in its launch of a national co-sponsorship program, ECDC held three days of training in the past month for 14 staff from 10 affiliates. During the training, ECDC's national Community Engagement department shared guidelines, tips, and materials that staff can use to recruit and train co-sponsorship teams.
To respond to the large number of Afghans requiring resettlement services at once, ECDC has added 7 more placement sites to its network and increased its expected arrival numbers at all sites for an overall target of 6,615 individuals.
With support from the Open Society Foundations, ECDC is implementing a pilot project called Wider Welcome and has developed a training guide and toolkit to help resettlement agency staff critically think through how issues of race, privilege, and bias play out in community sponsorship for refugee resettlement and put strategies in place for overcoming barriers that might exist for diverse and immigrant groups to get involved.
ECDC is pleased to announce Adam VanNoord as the Director of the Multicultural Community Center it plans to establish in Wausau, Wisconsin.
ECDC is pleased to be one of three national resettlement agencies selected to receive a $250,000 grant from the Community Sponsorship Hub, which will be used to launch a national co-sponsorship program.
ECDC responded to the Department of State’s request for resettlement agencies to participate in its Afghan Placement and Assistance (APA) program, which launched September 1. ECDC has been approved to resettle 3,100 individuals across its network of branch offices and affiliated organizations in 15 cities across the country.
After careful consideration and community consultations, The Ethiopian Community Development Council, Inc. (ECDC) proposed Brattleboro, Vermont as a new refugee resettlement site in its annual funding proposal to the Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) for the Refugee Admissions Program.
