International Programs Center

UNCG’s Center for New North Carolinians

Posted on , updated on by Alex Parsons

Center for New North Carolinians

UNCG’s Center for New North Carolinians (CNNC) promotes access and integration for immigrants and refugees in North Carolina by bridging newcomer populations with existing communities through direct service provision, research, and training. Specifically, the CNNC conducts community-based outreach and programming, research and evaluation studies, and experiential training and leadership development to facilitate access to education, employment, health, and social services. The CNNC served over 2,000 immigrants and refugees annually. Its programs include the Community Centers Program which works collaboratively with partner agencies to provide on-site programming to immigrant and refugee families with a focus on employment, health, education, and social service access; Immigrant Health ACCESS Project which assists uninsured adult immigrants and refugees in obtaining health coverage and accessing integrated healthcare services in Greensboro; Thriving at Three which offers educational and support services to at-risk Latinx families with children ages 0-3; Immigration Services whose accredited staff offer high quality, low-cost or no-cost immigration services; Interpreter ACCESS Project which trains bilingual and multilingual individuals to become professional interpreters and operates a fee-based interpreter bank to provide health and human service access to individuals with Limited English Proficiency; and the CNNC Fellows who seek to strengthen immigrant and refugee communities through participatory research and evaluation.

The CNNC recently hosted its third annual Shifting Worlds Symposium with the assistance of the Fellows. This year’s symposium, titled “Engagement with Refugee and Immigrant Communities during a Pandemic: Collaborations, Challenges, and Resilience” included sessions dedicated to discussing support and services accessibility to immigrant and refugee communities. Nearly two hundred individuals registered to attend the sessions throughout the day.

The CNNC has also received several recent grants to support the implementation of its work: A US Citizenship and Immigration Services grant for the provision of free legal services for naturalization, and Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust and CDC Foundation grants to increase vaccination access, awareness, and education among refugee and immigrant communities. The CNNC has been recognized for its efforts with the 2021 W.K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Award and the 2021 C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Scholarship Award.

Most recently, in recognition of extraordinary community outreach, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities has named UNC Greensboro the winner of the 2021 C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Scholarship Award.

UNCG is recognized for its multipronged approach to increasing access to culturally responsive scholarship and community engagement. Through initiatives such as the Immigrant Health ACCESS Project (IHAP), part of the UNCG Center for New North Carolinians (CNNC), UNCG has helped create multi-directional pathways of health care access to marginalized communities.
IHAP reaches over 700 uninsured immigrant and refugee adults in Greensboro each year. CNNC is transforming refugee and immigrant services as it also transforms understanding and scholarship about the issues facing these communities. CNNC students, faculty, and community research fellows have contributed 25 peer-reviewed publications and over 20 practitioner-oriented publications and reports. Read the full story here!