Enhancing Access for Refugees and New Americans (EARN)

World Education, in partnership with RTI, WestEd, and Safal Partners, is providing nationwide technical assistance to the adult education field to support holistic immigrant integration efforts in linguistic, economic, and civic pillars.

President Biden’s recent executive order establishes a shared vision for individuals immigrating to the United States: “as a Nation of opportunity and of welcome, it is essential to ensure that our laws and policies encourage full participation by immigrants, including refugees, in our civic life.” The executive order also mandates the Secretary of Education to participate in the development of a national strategy to promote naturalization. With immigrants and their children expected to account for 85% of net growth in the U.S. workforce over the next 20 years, it is paramount to the nation’s prosperity that appropriate immigrant integration efforts, including education and training services, are in place to help these individuals achieve seamless linguistic, civic, and economic integration.

The Enhancing Access for Refugees and New Americans project recognizes the synergy between Integrated English Literacy and Civics Education (IELCE) programming and larger immigrant integration efforts and emphasizes the role that Adult Education and Family Literacy (AEFLA) practitioners can play to increase the quality of services provided to New Americans and other English learners (ELs). Further, this project presents an opportunity to significantly improve the quality of linguistic, civic, and economic integration services provided to diverse adult ELs through two clear goals:

Build AEFLA-funded programs’ capacity and knowledge to develop and enhance high-quality IELCE programming.
Support the development of bridges and networks between AEFLA programs and other immigrant integration organizations and efforts to better serve and support adult ELs with a variety of needs.

Framework

The Immigrant Integration Framework is an illustration of how IELCE and IET efforts can align with services and activities that further the linguistic, civic, and economic integration of immigrants.

See full framework here or click image.

Resources

Videos

Expanding Immigrant Integration

This video shares how adult education expands and supports immigrant integration. It also highlights the important partnerships necessary for success in immigrant integration as well as provides examples of where this has occurred.

Contextualizing Civics for the Workplace

This video features the contextualization of civics content for Integrated English Literacy and Civics Education (IELCE) activities to prepare learners for Integrated Education and Training (IET) Montgomery College, in Maryland.

Spotlights

Using Multilingual Approaches to Support English Language Acquisition This spotlight explores the use of multilingual approaches to support English language acquisition, shares examples of statewide approaches, and highlights strategies for program design and instruction.

Civics in the Adult Education Classroom This spotlight describes and provides examples of how civics content and activities can be integrated and contextualized into instruction

Enhancing Access: Using Bridge Strategies to Connect IELCE Activities to IET Programs This spotlight illustrates how selected adult education systems are using bridge strategies to deliver IELCE activities to prepare English learners (ELs) for rigorous IET programs.

The Role of Navigators in IELCE/IET Career Pathways This spotlight explores the role career navigators and advisors play in serving English learners (ELs) and immigrants, who benefit from additional aid navigating complex U.S. systems and accessing services to help support their integration into U.S. society.

Serving Internationally Trained Professionals in IELCE Activities This spotlight shares promising practices that states, programs, and individual practitioners can use to support ITPs in applying their assets, skills, and credentials to achieve economic integration.

Serving Refugees in IELCE Activities This spotlight provides an overview of refugee classifications and their implications for adult education, innovative approaches to serving refugees, and resources to increase the civic, linguistic, and economic integration and inclusion of refugees into U.S. society.

Supporting the Economic Integration of Adult Learners with Emerging Literacy Skills This spotlight illustrates how IELCE activities can purposefully prepare learners for IET and other economic integration experiences by building learners’ skills and understanding of how to navigate community and economic systems.