UND's Conflict Resolution Center and community groups working with new immigrants plan a weeklong conference in June to examine the challenges and opportunities of increased cultural diversity in Grand Forks.
As people continue to arrive from places such as Nepal, Burundi, Iraq and Somalia, the conference planners want to find ways to ease their settlement here and their transition to citizenship.
The conference is scheduled June 14-19, culminating in a celebration of National Refugee Day on June 19.
Kristine Paranica, director of the Conflict Resolution Center, said the idea for an immigrant-focused conference came out of planning for other academic workshops organized by the center.
"We'd get into these discussions, and we started to hear the rumblings about our new immigrants," she said. In offices, at the grocery store and other places, "you would hear people make really rotten comments about other people -- things like, 'I won't let my kid go play at (a) park because all those black people go there now.' "
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The center also was getting calls for help, she said, including requests from three Grand Forks elementary schools that were having trouble with truancy, communicating with immigrant families and bullying -- bullying that has gone both ways.
"We need to get better at this," she said, adding that one goal of the June conference will be to provide training for social workers and others who work with new immigrants.
Another GF effort aims at citizenship
Conference planners intend to coordinate their efforts with city leaders, who recently started planning their own project -- in cooperation with the National League of Cities and funded in part by the Knight Foundation.
The league program was outlined to Mayor Mike Brown, City Council members and representatives of Global Friends Coalition and other advocacy groups last month. It would offer organizational help and training in diversity awareness, ways to improve public safety in immigrant communities and "citizen academies" to help immigrants learn to participate in local government, start a business, open a bank account and otherwise become active citizens.
"Diversity will make our community stronger," Brown said at the league presentation in January.
"But we know that change can be threatening," he said. "We want to avoid the pitfalls that other communities have faced and make this a positive experience both for the immigrants and for the people already here."
Paranica said organizers have approached the Otto Bremer Foundation about partial funding for the June conference, and they hope to involve local and regional companies and organizations, including institutions that employ new immigrants as well as fraternal or cultural associations representing other established ethnic groups.
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"The immigration story ties us all together, and this will be a good time for us all to look at ourselves in the mirror," she said. "It will be a great way to get to know our new neighbors."
Reach Haga at (701) 780-1102; (800) 477-6572, ext. 102; or send e-mail to chaga@gfherald.com .
