International Association of New Haven Awards $68,700 for Local Programs!
Leaders of six local non-profit groups met with International Association members recently to celebrate $68,700 in grant awards for refugee and immigrant education, global geography, and international arts and music. Whether it is helping young students from Afghanistan become literate in English or bringing art, music and dance from other cultures into classrooms, IANH highlights internationalism in New Haven. Each non-profit group received up to $20,000 in support.
“We are proud that our organization, founded over seventy years ago, can support programs that build respect and understanding among people in the community,” said Jane Baljevic, the International Association Grants chairperson. “We felt inspired by the contributions these groups are making.”
Arts for Learning Connecticut: The teaching artist group, Arts For Learning Connecticut, will bring workshops and performances to Roberto Clemente School to help 475 bilingual K-8 students develop HOT (Higher Order Thinking) skills through music, dance, poetry, puppet theater, and design.
Eli Whitney Museum: In a collaboration with Eli Whitney Museum, 6th grade students from King Robinson Inter-District Magnet School will create a large, wooden wall map to supplement their curriculum unit on “Movement and Migration: How Things Spread.”
IRIS: The Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services – currently working to resettle 200 newly-arrived Afghan refugee families -- will upgrade their website to provide interactive, centralized information and resources to benefit refugees and immigrants throughout Connecticut.
Music Haven: A specially commissioned work by Puerto Rican composer Luis Prado will provide a “Journey Through Music” for Music Haven students. By incorporating a composition with different levels of music for different levels of players, this series will allow young string musicians to perform folk melodies from around the world alongside professionals.
New Haven Reads: A new Saturday morning tutoring program will bring 30 recent refugee and immigrant students from Barnard and Fair Haven Schools to the New Haven Reads center to strengthen literacy skills, using special ESL phonics software. This project will expand the existing New Haven Reads 1:1 tutoring program, which already helps more than 280 New Haven K-8 students improve reading skills with after-school and online lessons.
Shubert Theatre: The National Dance Theater of Jamaica, coming to the Shubert in 2023, will give two performances for school groups through their Education and Community Outreach program which reaches over 5000 students in the area every year.