In June 2008, the International Center completed a project examining the challenges of integrating Georgia’s immigrant and refugee communities. The Center provided leadership for a public workshop for 80 participants, including local government officials, community advocates, educators, resettlement specialists, media professionals, and refugee representatives. The focus of this workshop was to generate and communicate information about refugees and new immigrants in Georgia, along with creating and promoting networking and planning future initiatives.

Since fall 2005, 60 University of Georgia students have participated in a service-learning project with African refugee youth in DeKalb County, Georgia. So far, the students have helped more than 250 young refugees. The students spend three hours per week throughout the semester of their participation working at an after-school center run by Refugee Family Services on Memorial Drive in Stone Mountain. There, the students help children recently arrived from Sudan, Ethiopia, Sierra Leone, and other African nations (and non-African nations such as Iraq and Afghanistan). They also study intercultural communication and communication patterns in acculturation. The service-learning program is a collaboration between the University of Georgia’s Department of Speech Communications and the International Center. [Learn More]