Program Coordinator, Buta Muzuri.
The African Community Development (ACD) has expressed appreciation for the awarded fund from the Fund for Idaho toward the workshop organized by ACD for the purpose of African community building and reconciliation dialogue workshop series. This four part workshop series addressed topic such as: Accepting differences, overcoming conflict, forgiveness, and finding common purpose.
The program was very well attended and included participants of varied ethnic and religious background. The turnout was great since we were prepared to receive 30 more 40 participants per each session, but we had more than 60 participants in each session and the discussion was full of high interest. We had a great success to gather many participants’ young men and women, ladies and seniors among our community. We also gathered representative among members of each community. The atmosphere was ambient and the debate was so engaging from each topic.
Since most of us are new Americans, we encouraged our members to follow an example of our host community which was open their hands and gave a warm welcome to be part of this melting pot society. The culture of dialogue was highly encouraged by all sectors of ethnic based of African refugee’s descents and immigrants. Since this topic has a great value in the history of our life it impacts our people continuously. So we are hoping this will be ongoing process in our daily interaction.
The success of the workshop was head from refugees who are living in Twin Falls and they are well interested to include them in the future meetings. The space offered by El Ada Community Partnership was convenient for the past meeting but we are thinking to have a bigger space in the coming meeting. We are also planning to invite all refugee resettlement agencies representatives and other nonprofit organization that have interest in bringing the community together to take part of the upcoming workshop.
The outcome of workshop was very impressive and as it might be expected from the larger population of the participants expressed the desire to have an ongoing dialogue in the area of conflict resolution. Majority of participant felt that there is a need to heal the wounds from communities who came resettled with history of mistrust, oppression, civil unrest, political turmoil.
ACD is hoping through partnership with Fund for Idaho to secure more funding opportunities in order to enhance the work of learning to live together in our community.
We sincerely thank our funder for such opportunity in sharing our story.
2011 Grantee: $2,500
African Community Development conducts educational and social service programs that help newcomers resettle in their new communities and acculturate, recover from past trauma, gain personal independence and economic self-dependency, and quickly become able participants and productive, contributing members of American society. Our community outreach also promotes awareness about refugee issues and challenges facing newcomers as they move through a cultural adjustment process in the USA. One of the common issues in our community and refugee population in general is conflict resolution among members in the community. The aim of this project was to create an environmental of dialogue as well as an understanding of some of the past issues that occurred in our countries of origin and adaptation of new culture in the USA
PO Box 6396
Boise, ID 83707
Phone: (208) 371-5398