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We believe that those closest to a problem are also closest to its solution. We flip the script and position refugee and migrant community members as the experts and civic architects. Through our grassroots initiatives, we are working to 1) support refugee communities in coming together to diagnose the issues most affecting them, and design solutions that best address them; 2) make public life safer and more participatory by improving institutions' language access practices, from local governments to service agencies to health care systems; and 3) reconstitute relationships of charity to relationships of mutual aid and social justice, building a strong and vibrant social fabric that enables neighbors to take care of one another, long term.
RCP is a grassroots organization working with refugee and migrant communities across central North Carolina. We are made up of 1,200+ RCP Members from all over the globe, rebuilding home here. Our Membership is made up of:
Here, neighbors are in deep relationship with one another. We use the language justice lens to see the ways that English dominance blocks access to community services, opportunities, and institutions, while gradually erasing global language cultures. We use institutional organizing principles to advance language access, working on the institution side to reveal language discrimination, make system-level changes, and rebuild the economy of language work so that refugee and migrant community members who wish to work with their communities as an interpreter have a sustainable career path to do so.
The Hive is interactive, where users can reply to any message to receive one-on-one support from RCP staff and interpreters, right away. RCP interpreters host live Q&A sessions with Members - open to the public - to answer questions, in their primary languages, in real time.
The Hive began as an emergency response network during Hurricane Florence in 2018. RCP Members were mapped into a county-wide phone tree, and, partnering with the Town's emergency communications department, RCP interpreters recorded mp4 audio and video messages in 5 different languages 'round the clock, getting critical disaster preparation information to 900+ non-English-speaking residents every few hours. Members reported that this was the first time they’d understood communications from local government and news sources.
Members reported that this was the first time they’d understood communications from local government and news sources. Using this shareable technology, 1000+ refugee and migrant residents in NC, and their friends and family in other cities and regions beyond our service reach, received accurate and up-to-date information, enabling them to pursue critical services and resources.
It's all about relationships. Bridge Builders pairs RCP families with Bridge Builder Volunteers, emphasizing the unlearning of saviorism and the conventional "service" relationship in favor of relationships of reciprocity and mutual aid. We aim to eliminate the American Boot Straps Myth from our collective psyche, centering instead experiences of collective care and solidarity.
Bridge Builders is where neighbors take care of one another. Local residents are trained and matched with RCP families, walking alongside Members to assist them in addressing immediate needs - like finding housing or employment - and working toward long term goals, like going to college. Bridge Builders serve as cultural consultants and emergency contacts, accompanying Members to job interviews or medical appointments, and supporting them in times of crisis, like natural disasters or police encounters. These relationships are deliberately reciprocal, where both parties support one another, and are grounded in a critical awareness of structures and legacies of power and oppression, so that we may building an enduring foundation of radical companionship and solidarity.
Pre-COVID, 230+ residents worked with 520+ RCP Members per year. While Bridge Builders requires a 12-month minimum commitment, the relationships between Bridge Builders and Members last many more. Many Bridge Builders and Members have been working together since the initiative began in 2012.
Our arterial focus on language justice emerged after RCP’s Women’s Group devoted one of their monthly gatherings to sharing frustrations and horror stories about the impact of language barriers in local medical clinics. It quickly became a community priority as it centered, also, around the conviction that cultural identities help keep us safe, nourished, and healthy - and language cultures quickly become endangered in English-dominant environments. We keep cultural identities alive through language preservation, language justice activism, and institutional organizing around language access practices and policies.
Institutions are federally mandated to provide language services for residents who speak languages other than English, but few comply. Those that do typically provide telephonic language services, which often fail. Meanwhile, the economy for local language workers is drying up as language services are contracted out to multinational corporations using remote technologies. We want to change that.
Members reserve an RCP Language Navigator, a community interpreter to accompany them to any appointment where they, providing social and language support. The Language Navigator helps them navigate the environment, from parking lot to receptionist check-in, to appointment room, and advocates for an official interpreter from the service provider. If the clinic does provide an interpreter, the Navigator attunes to the quality of the interpretation provided, taking notes when misinterpretations occur, instances of verbal abuse, or all-out neglect (ex: when an interpreter refuses to communicate a patient’s question). The Navigator intervenes if the situation goes poorly, and ensures that the patient understands doctor’s instructions. They help with post-appointment activities, like filling prescriptions at the pharmacy or following up on referrals.
Meanwhile, we work on the institution-side to increase demand for quality language services, and on the community-side to increase the base of local language workers. We mobilize institutions to localize their language services by contracting with local interpreters, thereby harnessing the community’s existing multilingualism and strategically rerouting the dollars spent on multinational telephonic corporations back to the community.
Members reserve an RCP “Language Navigator”, a community interpreter to accompany them to any appointment where they will need interpretation. The Language Navigator helps them navigate the environment, from parking lot to receptionist check-in, to appointment room, and advocates for an official interpreter from the service provider. If an interpreter is not provided, the Language Navigator serves as the interpreter. If the clinic does provide an interpreter, the Navigator attunes to the quality of the interpretation provided, taking notes when misinterpretations occur, instances of verbal abuse, or all-out neglect (ex: when an interpreter refuses to communicate a patient’s question). The Navigator intervenes if the situation goes poorly, and ensures that the patient understands doctor’s instructions, including helping to fill prescriptions from pharmacy.
Meanwhile, we work on the institution-side to increase demand for quality language services, and on the community-side to increase the base of local language workers. We mobilize institutions to localize their language services by contracting with local interpreters, thereby harnessing the community’s existing multilingualism and strategically rerouting the dollars spent on multinational telephonic corporations back to the community.
Language inaccess and cultural unfamiliarity threaten the health and safety of birthing refugee mothers in American hospitals, while hindering health care providers from providing safe medical care during labor and delivery. Birth Allies uses a relationship-based accompaniment model centered around bi-directional cultural translation - bridging the gap between healthcare providers and their patients - to addresses the systemic disparities in health outcomes faced by refugee and migrant birthing parents during childbirth.
Birth Allies recruits and trains women from refugee and migrant communities as “community doulas”, equipping them with the skills and navigational insights into American healthcare systems as badged birth workers. We then assemble doula and interpreter teams to provide in-person language support and relationship-based accompaniment for expectant mothers from pregnancy through labor & delivery through postpartum life, filling in gaps in prenatal education and cultural understanding, while building relationships of trust between mom and her doula team, and allowing the team to prepare their language justice approach prior to entering the hospital for delivery. This model ensures cultural understanding and orientation, interpretation and emotional support, while centering and preserving the cultural birthing traditions across refugee and migrant communities.
