Empowerment Across Communities
Portland, Maine

About Our Project

We are increasing mental health access and intercultural connections for immigrant and refugee students who need emotional supports, and building the cultural responsiveness of our school social workers, teachers, school-based health center staff, and community providers through intensive staff development. We work closely with immigrant and refugee families to empower them through on-going engagement activities that strengthen families and cultural communities. Student identity support groups welcome and sustain new arrivals. For more information, view our poster.

Demographic Data

http://www.portlandschools.org/schools/multilingual/about/demographics.html

Our Work

Our large, diverse partnership collaborates to increase the quality and number of services available to the 1500 students who are identified as English Language Learners (ELL) in the Portland Public Schools. The partners believe strongly that this project, Empowerment Across Communities, has enabled them to break out of their organizational silos and join together to strengthen their services for the benefit of the target population. The project strategy is based on an assumption that the project will increase mental health access by training mental health professionals on culturally responsive practices. Once the mental health professionals receive intensive training in the cultures of students from other countries, then they will be able to work with immigrant and refugee children more comfortably and competently.

Our Partners

• Portland Public Schools’ Multilingual and Multicultural Center
• Center for Grieving Children
• City of Portland’s Student Health Centers
• Portland Health Division Office of Minority Health
• Community Counseling Center
• DayOne
• Maine Medical Center, Primary Care
• Possibilities, Inc.
• Safe and Drug Free Schools Program, Portland Public Schools
• Spurwink Services
• Language Access for New Americans (LANA)
• University of Southern Maine School of Social Work

What We Are Learning:

The Portland Approach
Our definition of care (pdf)
Caring Across Communities Collaborative Framework for Services (pdf)
Caring Across Communities Collaborative Service Providers (pdf)

Designing Training on Culturally Responsive Practices
http://www.portlandschools.org/schools/multilingual/profdev/workshops.html

Interpreter Training: Design, Development, and Implementation

Community Engagement

Immigrant and Refugee Community Conversations
Workshops for Immigrant and Refugee Parents
Elements of Successful Collaboration

Success Stories:

For more information about this project, contact Grace Valenzuela at valeng@portlandschools.org