Making a new home more accessible through expanded language access
Refugee Community Partnership (RCP) is a grassroots organization in central North Carolina that builds trust with refugee and migrant communities and connects them with information and resources to navigate everyday life. RCP develops programming directly informed by the needs of refugee and migrant communities and delivers vital information that may otherwise be inaccessible in their primary language. In 2024, RCP partnered with over 2,000 program members in eight languages: Karen, Burmese, Spanish, Dari, Pashto, Arabic, Swahili, and Kinyarwanda.
Guided by their commitment to language justice, RCP preserves and celebrates the cultural identities of hundreds of people who are “rebuilding home” in North Carolina. As defined by the American Bar Association, language justice is an “evolving framework based on the notion of respecting every individual’s fundamental language rights—to be able to communicate, understand, and be understood in the language in which they prefer and feel most articulate and powerful.”
RCP focuses on the following three paths to cultivate belonging and trust, and expand language access to critical services:
Refugee Community Partnership provides consistent support and services to help refugees and migrants navigate everyday life.
RCP’s team members are members of the communities they serve. Their staff consists of community coordinators representing each language community they engage with and more than 30 interpreters and Language Navigators. The team provides community members with linguistic and culturally aligned support to help them enroll their children in school, find housing, secure health insurance, complete citizenship exams, and play an active role in their communities as they make their lives in North Carolina.
The team lives the diverse challenges and joys of refugee and migrant communities. From there, they ground RCP’s programming in convenings that foster connection between community members, like member conversations and dinners. One example is their Language Navigator Program, which emerged from shared frustrations and experiences among their Burmese Women’s Group about the barriers to language access in medical clinics. The program allows community members to request a Language Navigator who shares their language to accompany them to any appointment. Before and after the appointment, interpreters help members fill out forms, ask questions, clarify communications with their practitioner, advocate for their needs, and fill prescriptions at their local pharmacy, among other things.
“Our format is not to develop something and then bring people to it; it’s about bringing what the people of that community need.”
Refugee Community Partnership delivers critical community updates and rapid response messaging through two-way communications platforms.
RCP launched the Hive, an interactive network of WhatsApp text groups, when Hurricane Florence hit North Carolina in 2018. Partnering with the town’s emergency communications department, the organization’s interpreters recorded audio and video messages in five languages to deploy critical disaster information to 900+ non-English speaking residents around the clock. Members reported that this was the first time they understood communications from local government and news sources. This experience reinforced the need for rapid response messaging in various languages to respond to emergencies, which led to scaling up the Hive for more rapid response work in 2020 with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Six years since its inception, the Hive has grown into a digital organizing platform, connecting more than 2,000 migrant and refugee users who receive information translated into eight languages. From community updates like back-to-school giveaways to rapid response messaging before and after a crisis, the Hive is a critical information hub that ensures community members get the information they need to be safe and healthy.
Refugee Community Partnership expands language access by collaborating with state and local institutions.
In 2022, RCP began partnering with the UNC Family Medicine Center at Chapel Hill. In addition to sending Language Navigators to accompany community members at appointments, RCP conducted focus groups with Arabic-speaking patients to better understand their experiences with language access and quality care at the Center. Based on what they heard, RCP shared recommendations with clinic leadership at the Center, which led to the establishment of several language access improvements:
Offering additional video interpreting devices for use in the clinic
Distributing over 1,000 wallet cards among staff with key patient information, such as language dialect and preferred gender of interpreter
Developing the Improving Language Access Staff Training for Medical Assistants, launched in Spring 2025.
Not only did this local collaboration improve access and care at the Center, but it also had an impact nationally. In August 2024, the UNC Family Medicine Center team presented their learnings at the American Academy of Family Physicians’ national conference. The key takeaway from this presentation was clear: adopting more inclusive language access models in medical institutions nationwide is essential to reducing disparities in health outcomes for migrant and refugee communities.
In addition to expanding language access in NC through partnerships with local institutions, RCP works directly with state government officials through the Language Access Collaborative, a statewide learning cohort for municipal governments to increase language access in their districts. RCP has led nine municipal governments across the state through this three-part training series, provided in English, Spanish, and Kinyarwanda, and educated 65 officials of NC governments. As a result, all participating municipal governments are adopting improved language access policies in their communities—creating transformational change at the state and local levels.
What’s Next for Refugee Community Partnership
RCP continues to expand its reach across North Carolina. Today, it has a membership of more than 2,000 people, who advocate for themselves and their communities on issues related to healthcare access, disaster preparedness and response, and more.
With municipal partnerships established across the state, including the towns of Chapel Hill and Carrboro, RCP hopes to replicate and scale its community-led approach to language access nationwide and one day globally. As Refugee Community Partnership grows, its commitment to trust and relationship-building will always remain core to its mission.
“Core to our approach is relational organizing—using all of our work as a pathway for advocacy. Even on the individual level, when our team accompanies a community member to access a service, that’s a moment for advocacy, a moment to change someone’s mind or someone’s perception. These moments are what build the foundation to change things in big systems. ”
Get Involved in Refugee Community Partnership’s Work
RCP builds trust with refugee and migrant communities and connects them with critical resources to help them navigate everyday life. Here are several ways to get involved with RCP year-round:
Become a Bridge Builder Volunteer. In RCP’s bridge builder program, volunteers are paired with RCP Members and work together to help achieve Members’ personal goals.
Become a volunteer Language Navigator. Language Navigators accompany RCP Members as they navigate healthcare settings by providing transportation, accompanying them to appointments, helping to request an interpreter, and doing post-appointment follow-ups like filling prescriptions.
Volunteer at RCP’s Summer Camp. Every summer, RCP hosts a vibrant, multicultural, free summer camp. The camp is staffed by refugee and migrant young adults and volunteer camp counselors.
Join their on-call volunteers. On-call volunteers participate in specific activities like Family Fun Days or ad hoc initiatives.
Make a Donation: Donate to the RCP to help ensure they can protect and support refugee and migrant communities who are “rebuilding home” in North Carolina.