• Vietnamese refugees in New Jersey want to start a program to assist Vietnamese women who feel isolated in their communities.
• A Somali refugee in San Diego wants to measure the success of his leadership program for newly resettled refugee teens.
• Bosnian refugees in New York look for advice on how to plan budgets for their growing aid organization that helps refugee newcomers.

Refugees who come to this country to start a new life have always depended on those who have come before them and lived through the same experience to help them adjust. Around the United States, refugees have started their own small not for profit organizations with the mission of providing this kind of help. While their knowledge about refugees' needs, language and culture gives them special expertise in serving refugees, these new organizations often require assistance to meet numerous organizational and management challenges.

The IRC's Project for Strengthening Organizations Assisting Refugees (Project SOAR) is a unit within the IRC's Resettlement Department that assists these new organizations, founded by and for refugees. Funded by the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, the unit provides technical assistance in the area of organizational capacity building to ensure that the groups we assist accomplish their missions, serve their  beneficiaries effectively and engage in long-term strategic planning.

Areas Of Technical Assistance

• Strengthening Organizational Management: organizational start-up and development, strategic planning, governance, leadership development and external relations.
• Strengthening Financial Management: accounting, budget management and resource development.
• Strengthening Human Resource Management: personnel management and staff development.
• Strengthening Program Management: program design and implementation, monitoring and evaluation and case management.

IRC Field Expert Network

The IRC maintains a network of staff members across the country which provides technical assistance to groups participating in the SOAR project.   Each member is a practicing professional in a specific field:  finance officers provide assistance in budgeting, program managers offer assistance program design and implementation and resource developers assist organizations with fundraising.

IRC Technical Assistance Field Experts use six approaches:

• Customized on-site visits
• National and regional workshops
• Telephone and email consultations
• Resource and materials development
• Web site and online resource library
• Listserv

IRC partners with the Nationalities Services Center and Pan-African Association of Chicago  on this project.

Field Expert Profiles and Q&A: Leslye Boban l Bonnie Brownsberger  l   Danya Pastuszek  l  Louisa Assibi  l  Valerie Wonder

Organization Profiles:

• Rong Nay and and Vien Siu from the Montagnard Human Rights Organization
• Eldin Elezovic from the Bosnian American Association of New York City
• Van Nguyen from Boat People SOS in Camden, New Jersey

Contact

Danya Pastuszek, project officer
E-mail: danya.pastuszek@theIRC.org
Telephone: (212) 551-0950