History

In 2004, the Colorado Trust’s Supporting Immigrant and Refugee Families Initiative, a four year, $6.4 million effort was announced. Representatives from the Aspen to Parachute community came together to support an application to the Colorado Trust.

Through a very competitive process, 10 Colorado communities were initially funded. These communities include: Aspen to Parachute Region, Boulder County, El Paso County, Gunnison County, Lake County, City of Littleton, Mesa County, Morgan County, Pueblo County & Summit County.

The initial $5,000 grant from the Trust which was matched by community donations to fund our planning efforts. The intent was to develop a comprehensive plan that would help immigrants adjust to and become an integral part of their communities. Immigrant integration involves adaptation on the part of immigrants themselves and on the part of the broader or “established community".

The initial planning process took the region a little over one year to complete. Over 80 people attended at least one of the initial meetings. Committee members decided that any planning had to start with input from members from each community in the region. A series of community meetings and small group discussions were planned. The committee felt that while the large community forums might attract more people, it was the small group discussions in naturally occurring groups that would allow people to come together with friends, neighbors and co-workers and feel more comfortable expressing their opinions. “Naturally occurring groups” were defined as groups of people who met with one another regularly for other reasons. These groups could be work teams, church groups, school and college classes, city and county committees and service organizations. The committee realized that additional methods would be needed to reach out to immigrants outside of the Latino community. Therefore the committee worked very hard to identify, and contact all immigrant populations in the community to request their participation in the process. Strategies used included having meetings with immigrants at their place of employment, after church services, and during English as a Second Language classes.

Forty-five volunteers were trained to facilitate these naturally occurring group meetings. The facilitators in all the meetings consistently asked two questions: What would it take to have a community where people feel comfortable living together? What actual activity will help us reach that goal?

We have found that when asked, many immigrants will define themselves as established community members – because they truly feel part of the community. We also found that quite a number of people who immigrated to this area from areas in the US such as the east coast defined themselves as immigrants.

The Initiating Committee identified over 150 naturally occurring groups to be contacted and they were sent letters explaining the intent of the project and asking if they wanted to be included in the process. Ninety-four groups agreed to participate and spent 1-2 hours with one of the facilitators suggesting activities and goals that would improve integration in our community. In addition, people
attended one of the five open community meetings that were held in Basalt, Carbondale, Glenwood Springs, Silt, and Rifle. Well over 1,000 people participated in one of these groups and had their ideas recorded.

On April 8th and 9th, 2005, a large community integration meeting was held and attended by over 100 people. At that meeting each of the naturally occurring groups was invited to report on their group’s discussion. Additional ideas were generated at this meeting. All of the participants were invited to join the Decision Making Committee. This group’s charge was to write a document, which summarized the community’s efforts and recommendations, and to make decisions about the best use of the four-year funding from the Colorado Trust.

Twenty-seven people joined the Decision Making Committee, and a core group worked together for eight months to write the community plan and to make decisions regarding allocation of funding. In order to keep the momentum going, the Decision Making Committee decided to fund the continued community work around immigrant issues that will lead to an increased sense of integration among all residents, and decided to focus its efforts on four outcomes:

Building relationships between Immigrant and established community members;
Increase awareness, understanding and appreciation between immigrant and receiving communities regarding each other’s language, culture, values, and contributions;
Increase immigrant’s access to information and orientation regarding their communities, employment, education, physical health, mental health and U.S. traditions and customs regardless of language preference;
Identify, develop and promote leaders in all cultural communities.

Using a Request for Proposal process, grant requests were solicited from the community and the committee made decisions to recommend funding of six immigrant/community demonstration projects in 2006.

In January 2006, the region applied for a four year, $75,000/year Colorado Trust grant to fund the plan for continued community efforts towards improving the integration of immigrants and the receiving community. In addition, the El Pomar Foundation’s Penrose Non Profit Institute awarded a one-year grant of $25,000 to the Aspen to Parachute region’s immigrant integration fund, so that community demonstration projects could be funded. The funded projects included:

Congregations and Schools Empowered (CASE): $25,000 to fund a community organizing model aimed at bringing people together and empowering them in order to address local problems that are of concern to those involved. The model CASE is using places a strong emphasis on identifying and training leaders who then have the opportunity to practice leadership skills in the community.
Colorado West Regional Mental Health Center: $10,000 will fund bilingual mental health staff, and a consultant to work directly with employers who offer Employee Assistance Programs (for mental health) and their immigrant employees to increase employer awareness, understanding, and appreciation of immigrant employee culture, values, language and contributions.
Colorado Mountain College, Even Start Family Literacy Dual Language Multicultural Preschool: $10,000 to support a bilingual preschool. The program includes extensive parent education activities, 2nd language acquisition for both children and their parents, and will also require parent participation in integration discussions, as well as in activities that are planned.
Access Roaring Fork: $10,800 ($ 7,000 from El Pomar & $3,800 from the CO Trust) for the creation, and production of three pilots of a TV Cooking show designed to create interaction, awareness, understanding and appreciation between different cultures. Shows will be distributed through public access TV stations, libraries, the Internet and public showings.
English in Action: $10,000, in El Pomar Funding will be used to increase the existing programs capacity to match members of the immigrant community who want to improve their language skills with members of the receiving community who want to help, and build a one to one relationship with someone from the immigrant community. Also to establish a volunteer program for students.
Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club: $5,000, from El Pomar, to expand the enrollment of low income, Spanish speaking immigrant children into ski and snowboard programs.