The Strategy

[En Español]

Recognizing the Stranger is a multi-year leadership development strategy of the West/Southwest Industrial Areas Foundation established with the support of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD).

It is designed to assist parishes with large immigrant populations in developing stronger relationships both inside and between community institutions.

Launched in 2017, it is creating a new, regional effort to impact the broader civic and political culture of the immigration issue.

It begins by supporting immigrant leaders to more deeply engage their own parishes, schools and communities, and then to move towards building bridges with sister parishes from more conservative communities to raise a new voice, an imaginative call speaking out for a compassionate and constructive response to the broken immigration system.

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How It Works

Recognizing the Stranger employs a three-fold process:

(1) investing in immigrant leadership with advanced Spanish-language training to build their ability to conduct specialized workshops and civic academies in their home parishes,

(2) teaching immigrant leaders how to impact parish, school and community life through alliances with non-immigrants, and

(3) developing the strategic regional capacity to create new relationships of mutual understanding and trust to inform and expand a pro-immigrant constituency.

Recognizing the Stranger starts by investing in the capacity of immigrant families both to claim the agency and dignity of personhood that is... continue reading →

Elements of Training

Recognizing the Stranger collaborates with local dioceses, CCHD diocesan directors, and pastors to identify parish leadership teams to participate in 3-day Spanish language Leadership Training Institutes, with the goal of preparing teams of lay leaders to return to engage and contribute to their home parishes. The training is led by Spanish speaking organizers and key lay leaders from the West/Southwest IAF with deep experience in parish based organizing. Training staff recognize the key role of the local parish pastor in making this effort successful, securing the pastor's agreement to participate and also his commitment to actively engage with the training... continue reading →

What Happens After Training?

IAF organizing processes are similar to that of the synod.

SEE: In roundtable discussions, parishioners and neighbors are invited to make public their private pain and experience. These conversations are a place of encounter, where the poor are recognized and the gravity of their situations more fully realized.

JUDGE: Parishioners begin a process of discernment – probing to determine the full nature of what is challenging the community, forming a judgment of what is humane and what is not humane. What should justice and compassion look like?

ACT: Parish members are invited to take collective... continue reading →