A few months ago, we attended the Grantmakers for Education Annual Conference in Washington DC. Under the theme, Equity in Education: Empowering Community Voice, the conference included a number of sessions related to immigrant children and children of immigrants. These sessions presented unique learning opportunities for funders working at the intersection of immigration status, language, culture, and education for children and youth and their families.
Below, we’ve shared our key reflections from those conversations and put forward recommendations for education funders—not only for those that explicitly support immigrant families, immigrant children, or children of immigrants, but for all education funders.
There were powerful messages shared across sessions and from a number of funders leading in different areas of the education continuum (e.g., K-12, higher education). One message that came over loud and clear was that even if education funders don’t see themselves as immigrant rights funders, most of them serve children of immigrants and immigrant students. These students are in almost every early childhood center, school district, and university in the country.
Another important message relates to ...