The greatest challenges facing our two-county region’s ability to integrate immigrants successfully include: 1) an inadequate legal services support infrastructure, 2) the insufficient number of effective adult English language acquisition programs and 3) the ability of receiving communities to understand newcomers and recognize that many bring contributions to our region. Acknowledging these challenges, the community foundation is in a unique position to take leadership and partner with other stakeholders to initiate and invest in community-wide efforts that can intentionally weave newcomers
into the fabric of society and create opportunities for them to work with native-born residents on shared community goals and objectives. How we move forward as a region and as a society depends on whether immigrants are educated, whether
their families prosper and whether their communities find a civic voice