CRIW partners with underserved refugee and immigrant women in New Haven who lead our community-driven initiatives that honor self-determination and promote well-being.
WOMEN LEADING CHANGE
POWERED BY COMMUNITY
ROOTED IN COLLECTIVE WELL-BEING
Who We Are: CRIW - The Collective for Refugee and Immigrant Women’s Wellbeing is a nonprofit in New Haven founded in 2020. We partner with underserved refugee and immigrant women with limited power due to gender, ethnicity, poverty, education, language, culture and health disparities who drive and guide our programs.
Our Approach: Starts with listening to women
We build: Relationships and initiatives from strengths, honoring experience and culture and promoting self-agency.
Our Programs: Shift power and fuel systematic change by creating new ways of doing things to solve long-standing challenges by breaking barriers starting at the grassroots level. CRIW’s ommunity-led initiatives and cross-sector partnerships create models of what's possible when those most impacted shape the systems meant to serve them.
We believe: Lasting impact is built through connection. We foster community collaborations rooted in shared goals and mutual support.
We trust in: The transformative power of community as a force for healing, growth and justice.
Our Focus
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Building collective power with preliterate Afghan women through leadership training and civic engagement.
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CRIW coordinates the a joint, onsite ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) class offering multi-level learning taught by our partners at New Haven Adult Education and a Family Literacy Program by IRIS - Integrated Refugee and Immigrant Services along with childcare provided by Havenly fellows and CRIW volunteers. These are uniquely designed to meet the needs of refugee and immigrant mothers and their preschool children, and focus on practical and meaningful applications to actively and positively engage in community life.
This program resulted from a co-design process in which CRIW and our collaborators Yale Program for Recovery and Community Health partnered with a large group of refugee and immigrant women, allowing them to take the lead in identifying and prioritizing the community’s most pressing and unmet needs. In this process, they identified the #1 need: An all-women, ESOL class with onsite childcare within walking distance of their homes. Working closely with our partners at New Haven Adult Education, the women advocated for this unique program and within months, it was created, staffed, coordinated and in full swing.
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Using multiple artistic platforms, we reduced barriers to expression and provided preliterate Afghan women who are often unheard, to tell their stories.
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CRIW is committed to collaborating with individuals and organizations to support existing programs, collectively envision and create new, meaningful initiatives and celebrate community.
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Our Initiatives
Upcoming: Piloting a Co-Designed Health Equity Initiative for Afghan Refugee and Immigrant Women Living with and/or Caring for a Family Member with a Disability
CRIW is partnering with Yale School of Medicine’s Program for Recovery and Community Health (PRCH) to launch a culturally-responsive, Co-Design project focused on better understanding and addressing the needs, hopes and systemic barriers faced by refugee and immigrant women in the Greater New Haven area who are:
Living with a physical and/or mental disability
Caring for a family member with a disability
Using an equity-led process, CRIW’s two-phase initiative will build self-determination, shift power, and reimagine systems with refugee women at the center. This project will leverage CRIW’s successful experiences in community-led programming and cross-sector partnerships to create a model of what's possible when those most impacted shape the systems meant to serve them that can inform future work with other underserved communities to reduce disparities and promote well-being.
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New & Noteworthy
December/2024 - “I think about this kind of work as being about creating space for unheard voices to speak, and to share their side of the stories. I feel that there’s kind of a concept of silence that is happening in our society right now, and so this is about more than just art; it’s about making room for these women’s experiences in the world.” — Hangama Amiri, Yale MFA ‘20.
November/2024 - The New HavenIndependent’s Brian Slattery visits CRIW’s exhibit: “Afghan Women Explore Themes of Identity & Home” on display at the Wilson Branch of the New Haven Public Library through December 3, 2024. “"They came so far, and brought so much with them, in their heads, hearts, and hands. Steeped in old ways, they’re creating new ties."
