C05 Session: Building Immigrant Community Capacity

NCCP and CSIO both work to strengthen immigrant community capacity to advance social justice in their communities.  At the heart of this work are programs and strategies for building immigrant constituents’ leadership in organizations, organizing efforts and decision-making processes which shape the conditions in which they live.  This session will draw upon the experiences of NCCP and CSIO in these areas and will offer participants the opportunity to learn: 1) specific approaches and practices for strengthening immigrant community leadership and, 2) the centrality of these efforts to any capacity building in immigrant communities.  

NCCP and CSIO believe that capacity building work must be viewed within a framework of action for social and economic justice.  As such, we believe that capacity building work should be driven by the goal of building immigrant communities’ power to participate in and shape the decisions that affect their lives.  Leadership development activities at both NCCP and CSIO are co-designed with immigrant participants and are focused on their needs.  The learning processes utilized are based on participatory practices which are at the core of our shared leadership development model.  This workshop will be structured so that participants:

• deepen their understanding of the leadership development approach at CSIO and NCCP and its connection to community capacity building;
• have an experience of a participatory learning process;
• hear specific, more detailed examples of CSIO’s, NCCP’s, and others’ efforts to promote constituency leadership in immigrant communities;
• work together with presenters to clarify the lessons learned from those efforts;

About the Presenters

Heba Nimr, Northern California Citizenship Project (NCCP)

Heba Nimr recently joined the Northern California Citizenship Project team as Program Manager of Educational Resources and Documentation. Prior to joining NCCP, Heba was an attorney with La Raza Centro Legal, a community-based law center in San Francisco's Mission District, where she worked with immigrant communities throughout the Bay Area to speak out against and directly challenge local immigration enforcement and detention practices. She has conducted extensive research and community education on the intersections between criminal justice and immigration policies, and the impact of anti-terrorism laws on immigrant communities. For the past 15 years--in the Bay Area, Midwest and the Boston-area--Heba has worked with several non-profit organizations and community initiatives to address prisoner rights, reduce U.S. reliance on incarceration, advance Palestinian self-determination, challenge all forms of violence against women, and promote health security and economic justice for all.