IANH News
April 21, 2025
The International Association of New Haven awards Grants for 2025/2026!
The International Association of New Haven, which is celebrating its 75th anniversary, is pleased to announce the 2025/2026 grant recipients at a recent meeting. A total of $72,000 was awarded to four organizations. Each non-profit group received $18,000, after competing in a process that involved 18 groups submitting an initial short proposal and 11 being invited to submit full applications.
IRIS (Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services) received a grant to support its Youth Leadership Program, led by Associate Director of Education, Omar Yacoub. About 40 New Haven high school students who are immigrants/refugees from countries including Afghanistan, Syria, and South Sudan participate in the program. Through interactions and engagement with each other and with the community, the students receive tutoring, engage in service projects, improve social and academic skills, gain confidence and become acclimated to their new environment. About 60 volunteers are available to assist the students as needed.
Nou La Nou Pare (We Are Here We Are Ready) is a group, led by co-founder Imani Jean-Gilles, which has only been official since 2024. Their Ayisyen Cultural Heritage Initiative is a year-long series of programs and public events designed to preserve and promote the cultural heritage of Haiti and to change perceptions about Haitian culture. They are also working toward having a digital archive of stories and information about the linked history of Haiti and the United States. They partner with a Southern Connecticut State University Social Justice Collaborative group and are also involved in attending and conducting Taino language workshops.
City Seed’s Naseema Gibson recounts the history and evolution of Sanctuary Kitchen, which began in 2017. It is a six-month cultural training program for refugees and immigrants, which includes culinary ESL, culinary arts including measurements, and internships. The organization has helped participants learn to provide catering to the New Haven community and to sell products at the City Seed farmers’ markets and also to tell their personal stories. Many of the members of the first cohort have become managers by now, and more professional development is in progress to enable even more outreach and community engagement.
Vivan Las Autonomas is a group which became official in 2023, according to Director Vanesa Suarez. Members of the group work to support families impacted by a loss because of gender-based domestic violence and to raise awareness about femicide in CT, a state in which two women are murdered each month. They are addressing their mission with healing and advocacy through the arts, with small art projects involving talk and healing and through festivals and public-facing events like their Day of the Dead event honoring victims (women, children, and infants) of femicide.
We wish all of the awardees a successful completion of their programs!
April 12, 2024
We are pleased to announce this year’s recipients of IANH grants!
The Church Street Alliance for Family Engagement PTA in Hamden will conduct a week-long Multicultural Festival, during which students will be immersed with specific countries and cultures. In a schoolwide celebration, they will then pass along their learning to other students and to the families of the school. Also, during the school year, a Cultural Exposure Project will provide opportunities for student to experience history and traditions in Connecticut through a variety of focused field trips.
The Collective for Refugee and Immigrant Women’s Wellbeing has been facilitating two projects with a group of women from rural Afghanistan to provide opportunities for these women to tell their stories. In Photovoice, participants photograph, record and reflect upon their experiences. In a Fabric Arts Workshop, the group is involved in a process of developing ideas of “home” into a finished textile piece and narrative. Public exhibits of these projects in the New Haven community will offer a forum for discussion, building social connections, and enhancing intercultural understanding.
LEAP (Leadership, Education and Athletics in Partnership) will embark on a project called “Cultural Connections through Art and Music” for the 700 New Haven youth ages 7 – 12 in its summer and after-school programs. Students will have classes in enriching activities like African dance, Brazilian Capoeira (ceramics focusing on African and Asian traditions) and painting inspired by international artists. Each session will culminate in an Expo with each group of students sharing what they have learned with each other and with their families.
Music Haven will undertake a project called “Voices: Untold Stories” which will present the stories of local refugees and immigrants and their unique experiences. “Storytellers” from Iraq, Afghanistan, Republic of Congo, Mexico and Ukraine will share their stories through interactive workshops involving music shared by Music Haven’s professional musicians and their students. Audience members will also participate by sharing their own stories, which will elicit musical improvisation. Music Haven’s high school students will plan and assist with up to ten workshops, and the culmination will be a film documenting the project, which will be shared with the community.
The New Haven Symphony Orchestra will offer Free Family Concerts at the New Haven Green, the Stetson Library Branch of the New Haven Free Public Library, and the Reggie Mayo Early Learning Center. The concerts showcase diverse books and stories and provide an introduction to the orchestra and to other cultures. For example, one concert will feature the story of Anansi, the Spider, a folk tale from the Akan people of Ghana that promotes an understanding of the importance of fairness and sharing.
April 25, 2023
The International Association of New Haven is pleased to announce the 2023/24 grant recipients. A total of $65,000 was awarded to local organizations:
Arts for Learning Connecticut was awarded $10,000. They will continue their Higher Order Thinking (HOT) Schools program at Roberto Clemente in New Haven and Helen Street in Hamden in the 2023-24 school year. They will also support culturally responsive practice with the launch of Emerge, a training and mentorship program for 85 teaching artists.
Elena's Light received $15,000 to support and expand its English as a Second Language program, which pairs refugee women with volunteers in a personalized tutoring environment designed to be responsive to the needs of each client. They also have a legal advocate who coordinates training for Connecticut lawyers in immigration issues.
The International Festival of Arts and Ideas was awarded $20,000 to promote cultural understanding by bringing Garba 360, with its traditional Gujarati folk dances from India to the New Haven Green in June of 2023. The performance includes a Connecticut-based band and audience participation and will also be offered at several New Haven schools. Educational materials about the Hindu festival Navrati will also be available on the Festival’s website.
Sanctuary Kitchen received $20,000 to extend its culinary ESL and culinary arts training program to a new cohort of refugee and immigrant chefs, create a new advisory board, hold more community events, build a network of employer partners, and develop toolkits and webinars for employers interested in hiring Sanctuary Kitchen trainees.
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The International Association also sponsored Yale-China Association's Lunar New Year Parade 2023:
April 22, 2022
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.
March 19, 2021
International Association of New Haven Awards $72,000 to Five Local Multicultural Organizations
March 19, 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic has been challenging for many New Haven non-profit groups, but in March, the International Association of New Haven (IANH) awarded $72,000 in grants to help five local organizations fund projects that will continue to serve their diverse communities in 2021.
Leadership, Education and Athletics in Partnership, Inc (LEAP) was awarded a grant of $17,000 to expand Spanish and ELL -- English Language Learner -- materials for students and counselors in their summer program and on their website. They also plan to add after-school language and cultural enrichment classes when New Haven Public Schools resume full-time.
The New Haven Symphony Orchestra (NHSO) was awarded a grant of $10,000 to support performances and community conversations that will showcase works by composers of color. NHSO has created this musical project to encourage dialog and understanding about race relations in America.
Read To Grow, which provides picture books to new babies and mothers, was awarded a grant of $10,000 to fund the translation of childhood literacy materials for immigrant parents. The materials will be developed in Arabic, Farsi, French, Pashto, and Swahili. In addition, they will use the IANH grant to purchase bilingual children's books to distribute to families in New Haven.
Sanctuary Kitchen, a community-based culinary program led by refugee and immigrant chefs, was awarded a grant of $20,000 to develop curriculum modules for Culinary Training, English language classes and Public Speaking. To help recover from their catering loss during the pandemic, Sanctuary Kitchen will also use the grant to update their marketing and online sales platform.
Yale-China was awarded a grant of $14,700 to create a toolkit of art projects for classroom teachers based on untold stories of Asians and Asian-Americans in New Haven. The project will encourage partnerships between artists -- who have been struggling during the pandemic -- teachers, and groups in the community. The goal of the Asian stories and art projects in the toolkit will be to stimulate critical thinking, empathy, and imagination.
To be eligible for International Association grants and sponsorships, community non-profits can check the website at ianewhaven.org. Groups must be registered 501(c)3 organizations whose programs advance international, intercultural and global understanding. Grants can be awarded for up to two years in succession.
Past IANH grant winners have included Immigrant and Refugee Services (IRIS), Music Haven, The International Festival of Arts and Ideas, New Haven Children’s Museum, Long Wharf Theater and The Institute Library.
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