Using Volunteers for Cultural Orientation
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Delivery of Cultural Orientation happens throughout the refugee resettlement process and, as such, relies on the support and abilities of various individuals. While resettlement staff serve a critical role in delivering Cultural Orientation, some organizations have also opted to utilize volunteers in delivery. The term “volunteer” in this document is defined broadly to include students, interns, and AmeriCorps members as well as individuals from faith-based groups and the general community. Volunteers can have different roles in the implementation of Cultural Orientation, including serving as interpreters, working as trainers, assisting with childcare, providing transportation, or contributing to curriculum design.
What to Consider Before You Begin
Who is Involved?
Successful recruitment and management of volunteers requires engagement of various staff, starting with clear guidance and support from organizational leadership. Depending on the agency, organizational leadership may include national program management staff, who may provide guidelines, processes, and tools. Affiliate and field offices that have been successful at using volunteers in Cultural Orientation usually have a designated staff member for volunteer recruitment and management. However, a point of contact for volunteers can also be a caseworker, manager, or a committed volunteer. Regardless of the title, the selected individual should have experience managing volunteers, be knowledgeable about the refugee resettlement program, and have strong communication skills.
Materials and Resources Needed
In using volunteers for Cultural Orientation, you will need to ensure you have in place a structured volunteer management system to include key components such as the recruitment process, onboarding requirements, and volunteers’ roles and responsibilities. The volunteer management system should also include the monitoring and tracking of volunteers’ contact information, hours, attendance, and other logistical information. You may have access to additional information and perhaps even volunteer management software either at your own offices or from your Resettlement Agency national office.
Timing
The time needed to recruit, train, and manage volunteers for Cultural Orientation will vary based on the scope of work required of them. In some cases, volunteers may be used for short-term projects or to complete an internship over a few months, while other volunteers may make longer commitments, such as delivering Cultural Orientation on an ongoing basis for a year or more. Regardless of the scope, you will need to invest the proper time to recruit, onboard, and continually engage with volunteers throughout their service.
Application
Goal of Promising Practice
By using volunteers for Cultural Orientation, you will be able to:
- Support staff to develop and deliver a successful Cultural Orientation program at your office
- Enhance refugee learning and engagement by customizing and reiterating key Cultural Orientation messages based on refugees’ needs
- Create additional opportunities for refugees to integrate into their communities, while also increasing community involvement in the refugee resettlement process
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Assess need
Slide Content
Step-by-Step Guide
Assess need
The first step to using volunteers for Cultural Orientation is to assess Cultural Orientation needs at your organization and clearly define how volunteers will assist in addressing those needs. For example, do you need a volunteer with specific expertise to support a Cultural Orientation topic that has been challenging for refugees to understand like transportation or healthcare? Do you need a volunteer to help with one-on-one or group-based Cultural Orientation? As a part of assessing needs, consider the population you are serving, arrival patterns, and the local community. You should also consider staff capacity to recruit, support, and manage volunteers.
Step-by-Step Guide
Create volunteer job descriptions
Once you have a clear vision of how you want to use volunteers to support your Cultural Orientation delivery, you will need to create job descriptions for the volunteer roles you have in mind. This is an opportunity to clearly outline the responsibilities of the volunteers and the expected outcomes of their work. The job descriptions should also define the expected time commitment, the staff and refugee populations the volunteers will be working with, and any necessary or preferred skills or certifications.
Step-by-Step Guide
Recruit and select
After developing a volunteer job description, the next step is to create a volunteer recruitment and selection strategy. Consider potential opportunities to find volunteers. For example, do you have existing volunteers that might be interested in Cultural Orientation specifically? Can you establish partnerships with local universities or faithbased groups? Do you need to attend outreach events, facilitate meetings with businesses or corporations in your community, or host information sessions? Your recruitment strategy should include targets for number of people engaged and actual volunteers recruited. This practice will help monitor the ongoing time commitment required to recruit new volunteers. Based on recruitment efforts, you can then select volunteers through an interview process to ensure they are an appropriate match for the volunteer job description.
Step-by-Step Guide
Onboard
The onboarding process is critical not only for volunteers, but also for the staff and refugees who will be engaging with them. You should have clear onboarding and training plans. Onboarding should cover the fundamentals of refugee resettlement and Cultural Orientation delivery, as well as provide training on how to work effectively with resettlement staff, refugees, and interpreters. During the onboarding process, it is vital to review the volunteer job description and articulate the importance of Cultural Orientation in the resettlement process. New volunteers should also have clear guidance on how to access ongoing support and engagement from you or other staff members at your office.
Step-by-Step Guide
Manage
As a part of the ongoing management of volunteers, you should determine the process you will use to supervise and recognize volunteers. When volunteers are managed effectively, volunteer accountability and satisfaction are impacted favorably as well as demands on staff time. Without a plan for ongoing engagement, volunteers can lose interest, resulting in higher volunteer turnover, or they may digress from Cultural Orientation topics or miscommunicate information to refugees. Ongoing management processes should consider who will supervise the volunteer, the supervision mechanism, performance evaluation (including collecting feedback from refugees as appropriate), and the delivery of feedback. In some cases, if you have multiple volunteers, it may be beneficial to provide opportunities for them to exchange and learn from each other’s experiences. Additionally, you should consider how you will recognize each individual’s service and develop a transition process for when a volunteer departs. Transition plans should include collecting and centralizing any materials or resources the volunteer created or used, documenting lessons learned, logging their activities with recommendations for continuation, and if possible, conducting an in-person exit interview.
Practice in Action
The Cultural Orientation programs at both the North Carolina office of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) and the Boise, Idaho office of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) have benefited from long-term volunteers.
For three years, USCRI North Carolina has utilized two volunteers for Cultural Orientation delivery. Originally, the volunteers started as a part of USCRI’s Welcome Home Project, where they prepared and set up apartments for refugees and provided mentoring to newly arrived families. In conducting a regular check-in with the volunteers, USCRI North Carolina asked them about the possibility of delivering Cultural Orientation. In preparing them to take on this new role, the volunteers underwent additional training with USCRI and took CORE’s Online Cultural Orientation Certification Course. Their service has enhanced Cultural Orientation at the site on multiple levels. The volunteers enjoy the experience and have worked on improving delivery, including participating in CORE’s Cultural Orientation Knowledge Exchange Workshop. They have also trained a third volunteer. For the refugees, this model of Cultural Orientation promotes further integration into their communities and creates additional avenues to communicate about their experiences. Finally, the use of volunteers has allowed caseworkers, who previously delivered Cultural Orientation, to focus on other services.
At IRC Boise, the use of long-term volunteers started five years ago. Prior to using volunteers, Cultural Orientation was delivered by case workers. The office was experiencing challenges with administering Cultural Orientation due to staff time constraints and the need to provide childcare services during Cultural Orientation. To address these needs, the site secured a space in a local church which had a room for childcare. At the same time, they identified volunteers to provide childcare and assist in Cultural Orientation delivery. They have three consistent volunteers, who are also involved in other activities at the office, which strengthens their commitment and gives them a better understanding of the entire resettlement process. These volunteers also meet periodically to identify ways of enhancing Cultural Orientation delivery by focusing on different topics and their own teaching styles.
About three years ago, Interfaith Refugee Ministry (IRM), an Episcopal Migration Ministries’ affiliate in New Bern, North Carolina, asked the fire department to speak to the refugee community about fire safety. When the fire department requested to return each quarter, IRM realized they could build a Cultural Orientation program with other volunteers who could become an expert on a given Cultural Orientation topic.
Today, IRM has a continuous Cultural Orientation course, providing ongoing classes to clients as long as they wish. Classes are held four days a week for an hour and a half each day. IRM is able to hold these classes, in part, thanks to the volunteers that teach the classes. Volunteers from the community interested in teaching Cultural Orientation first speak with IRM to learn the overarching topics and process of Cultural Orientation. The volunteer is able to decide which topic most interests them and they are then trained thoroughly on that topic using CORE materials and other local resources.
The community has shown a sustained interest in this Cultural Orientation initiative and the Cultural Orientation coordinator currently only teaches Cultural Orientation in cases of volunteer absence. Volunteers and community members provide snacks for all Cultural Orientation classes and clients continue to be interested in attending. On any given day, 15 to 22 clients will attend Cultural Orientation classes, regardless of their arrival date.
Tips for Success
The following are a list of tips and recommendations based on feedback collected from Cultural Orientation leaders as well as research on volunteer use by nonprofits:
- Conduct a needs assessment to identify any gaps in Cultural Orientation provision and where volunteers can assist in filling those gaps.
- Establish clear roles, responsibilities, and expectations for volunteers.
- Develop and implement a standard process for recruitment, onboarding, and continued management of volunteers.
- Provide continued training and leadership opportunities for volunteers.
- Establish a method to track volunteer contributions, including hours served, which can help demonstrate capacity and need when applying for federal programs and grants.
