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PROGRAMS Current Program Activities The following are CSIO's current program activities:
Support for Immigrant Organizers and other Organizers of Color
Community/Labor Collaborations
Immigrant Executive Director Initiative As part of CSIO’s involvement in a four-year Hyams’ Foundation funded Immigrant Leadership Development Initiative, participants in peer learning groups began a dialogue about the shared lessons from and obstacles to their work. As a follow on to these sessions, executive directors of seven immigrant-led organizations representing the Cape Verdean, Central American, Chinese, Haitian, Brazilian and Irish communities have created a regular space to strategize about ways to meet some of their common needs. Organizational Development CSIO’s organizational development work has been conducted primarily through long term engagements with community-based immigrant organizations. We work with groups in an array of areas: decision-making systems, strategic planning, management and supervision systems, evaluation, executive coaching and support, board development, membership development, etc. Immigrant Leadership Development The Immigrant Leadership Fund (ILF) is founded by the Hyams Foundation and coordinated by the Center to Support Immigrant Organizing
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The core of CSIO’s work in this area is the Organizers of Color Initiative (OCI). The OCI was created in response to a foundation sponsored-report (which CSIO helped to research) on the barriers to the recruitment and retention of organizers of color in the greater Boston area.
Since 2000, CSIO has worked to support and promote activities which forward immigrants’ struggle for justice in the workplace. In the past, this work has included efforts to deepen relationships between immigrant workers centers and particular segments of the labor movement, to bring together immigrant organizers and leaders who are working to support worker rights in their own ethnic communities, and to promote understanding of workplace rights in general and the intersection of immigration and labor law, with particular focus on the rights of the undocumented.