Refugee and Immigrant Self Empowerment (RISE) Initiative

Refugee and Immigrant Self Empowerment (RISE) started in 2016 as a community capacity-building project. The University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine (CSM) learners, staff, and community partners work together to build capacity to address identified needs among immigrant and refugee communities. RISE evolved over the years and has become an impactful community empowerment and learning project.

Immigrants and refugee populations face unique barriers to achieving health and wellness in Canada. Lack of health literacy acts as a barrier which deters adequate awareness and access to resources. As many newcomers are under the age of 24, youth can play a crucial role as leaders for health promotions in their communities.

It is known that community-capacity building is important for improving the health of minority communities and that youth engagement programs focused on health-wellness and skill development have been shown to increase immigrant youth interests in improving the health of their communities. However, to our knowledge the communities themselves are seldomly involved in developing these programs.

The RISE program recognizes that the most efficient way to address community issues is to engage communities’ members actively in research and solution generation. This is why we equip immigrant/refugee youth with health education and leadership skills as well as engage with students, school teachers and community members to understand their perception of the role of youth in improving community level health literacy.

We co-create summer programs about health with immigrant youth acting as “community champions” to ensure the program was developed to fit youth needs. In cooperation with a team of undergraduate and medical students from the University of Calgary, activities related physical health, mental health, and social wellbeing were developed. After determining topics, experts in topic fields were contacted to assist with facilitating program sessions. The summer sessions consist of a combination of lectures from community experts, and activities designed by team leads that incorporated skill development in areas such as leadership, communication, and critical thinking. A summer long research assignment was added to encourage participants to reflect on what they’ve experienced within their communities. The involvement of immigrant youth in the development of the sessions is expected to lead to greater youth engagement within immigrant communities, so that they may improve the capacities of their communities.