Who they are

Refugee Community Partnership (RCP) is a non-profit organization based in Carrboro, North Carolina that serves the area’s refugee and immigrant communities through a number of initiatives that center community leadership, mutual care, and reciprocity. Language justice is a framework that shapes nearly all of the organization’s work and its staff and volunteers tackle language justice in a myriad of ways. RCP currently works in Arabic, Spanish, Rohingya, Chin, Karen, Burmese, Swahili, and Dari. The languages they work with are dependent on the makeup of the area’s refugee and immigrant community at a given time. When an individual or family wants to become a member (an informal designation rather than a formal process), they can choose for limited engagement and specific support, or they can choose to participate in more wraparound, holistic programs, like being matched with a volunteer or neighborhood pod that can provide longer-term support in navigating life in their new home.  

Refugee Community Partnership was founded by undergraduate student and first generation Bangladeshi immigrant, Asif Khan, as a “committee” in 2012. The committee was an extension of Asif’s experiences in a service-learning course the prior year and informed by his own experience of migration. The committee emphasized solidarity over charity and “designed trauma-informed interventions to address social determinants of health.” Eventually, the committee became a non-profit, and volunteer leaders stepped into staff positions while Asif transitioned to the board. 

From its inception, addressing language exclusion in local healthcare systems was core to RCP’s work.  Volunteers and the families they partnered with knew firsthand that language injustice resulted in a lack of access for the area’s immigrant and refugee families. However, the organization came to its “arterial focus on language justice” through priorities and needs expressed by members as part of a gathering of RCP’s Women’s Group.

In his role as a member of the organization’s board while in medical school, Asif helped pilot a “hotspotting program” through collaboration between RCP and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill‘s School of Medicine that laid the foundation for what would become the language navigator program. Read more in RCP’s 2020 Impact Report, pgs 9-12

RCP and Language Justice

Two of RCP’s most innovative language justice initiatives are its Hive and their language navigator program. The Hive is a digital platform that allows for efficient communication with  members and members can interact directly with each other as well as volunteers and staff. The Hive was the result of a need to get information to communities in the languages they spoke, in accessible and understandable formats during Hurricane Florence in 2018. The Hive was mobilized once again during the COVID-19 pandemic that began to affect the US in March 2020. RCP staff and volunteers  listened to the questions and needs expressed by members,  threw themselves into gathering all of the information that was being distributed in English by local institutions, and rapidly translated the information into the languages of members. Not only did they translate the information into members’ languages, they held live Q&A sessions so that members could ask questions in a safe and accessible way, created audio versions of the information being distributed in print, and much more.

Through its language navigator program, RCP works to generate “community-owned” language access. The organization trains community members, often the young people who would already play the role of cultural brokers for their families, to serve as navigators that help members advocate for themselves and access quality healthcare and human services. When interpretation is not available otherwise, navigators also serve as interpreters. While navigators provide direct support to community members, they also document gaps and barriers within local institutions. RCP then uses this community-generated data to hold institutions accountable for the services they are obligated to provide to patients and clients who speak languages other than English.

RCP draws its navigators and interpreters from local communities and knows that valuing and sustaining language work is a critical component of ensuring language justice for its communities. However, they have found it challenging to work within the gig model that dominates the interpretation field. Right now, young people who are often in school or older people who are not working full time are who tend to be available for interpretation or navigation work with RCP. The organization has had full time staff that serve as interpreters for some of their most prominent languages, however needs for other languages are mostly filled with interpreters on a gig by gig basis and they are currently navigating a transition to try to bring on more interpreters as part-time workers to address this issue. A lot of resources are required to sustain community members as language workers, and RCP is prioritizing large portions of its grant applications for interpretation funds. 

RCP continues to grow and explore new ways to cultivate mutual care and collective power within the communities they belong to. While they have had a sole executive director model throughout most of the organization’s existence, they have just recently switched to a new model of co-directorship, “toward a collective leadership structure, and one that centers lived experience with the refugee and migrant journey.” 

Read more about their approach to language justice on their website’s initiatives page.