Community Treasures: Recognizing the Contributions of Older Immigrants and Refugees

This report analyzes the motivations of immigrant elders engaged in civic roles and highlights the promising practices of agencies who successfully engage them. To learn about the state of civic involvement among immigrant elders, focus groups and individual interviews were conducted in Philadelphia Pennsylvania, Atlanta Georgia and Orange County California with 99 immigrant elders from seven major ethnolinguistic groups. We also spoke with key informants in the communities including community-based organizations to learn about the current efforts that sustain and promote the civic roles of elders who are foreign-born. In many cultures, the U.S. concept of "volunteering" is an unfamiliar one. Therefore, in this report, "civic engagement" is broadly defined to include informal and formal helping, giving, leading, influencing, and participating, which more closely reflects the variety of ways in which elders assist one another, their families, and the younger generations. When considering the civic engagement of foreign-born elders, words such as "volunteering" and "community service" may need to be replaced with more culturally appropriate language.