Advocacy Sessions
Grassroots Community Organizing for Immigrants’ and Refugee Rights
During this session, we will address ways to engage faith communities, refugees and immigrants as leaders within community organizing efforts to raise their voice, take action and create social change. We will discuss how to build collective power to make the change we want to see in order to create welcoming communities. In addition, we will discuss the importance for refugees and immigrants to develop a sense of their own agency within the civic system to be able to make concrete changes that benefit the lives of refugee communities that go beyond integration and self-sufficiency.
Following this session, participants will:
Understand the value of community organizing and the power it has for long term sustainable change.
Understand how faith communities, volunteers, refugees and immigrants can organize in their community to make change.
Presenters
Kokou Nayo, Refugee Community Organizer, Church World Service
Kokou Nayo (Nayo) serves as a Refugee Community Organizer at CWS. Prior to this position, Nayo was an English as Second Language Instructor with refugees and completed his BSW practicum with CWS. Nayo also holds a Masters in Community Management and Policy Practice from the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Social Work. He served as member of the Town of Chapel Hill Park, Recreation, and Greenway commission, and now serves on the Durham Recreation Advisory Commission and on the Watts Hospital-Hillandale Neighborhood Association Board. He enjoys teaching and working with our refugee and immigrant population. Nayo speaks French and some West African languages.
Myrna Orozco, Organizing Coordinator for the DC Immigration and Refugee Program at Church World Service
Myrna Orozco serves as one of Organizing Coordinators for the DC Immigration and Refugee Program at Church World Service. In this capacity Myrna leads work on Sanctuary movement efforts supporting immigrants at risk of deportation, living in houses of worship, and engaging faith communities in action around immigration issues. As part of the organizing team her role also focuses on building programs to scale and supporting the team to reach its goals. Myrna has been organizing for over a decade in the immigrant rights movement; she immigrated to the United States from Mexico with her family at the age of 4 and was raised in Kansas City, Missouri. She currently resides in Houston, Texas with her husband.
Watch Session
Click the play arrow in the lower lefthand corner of the video player, below, to watch the session.