RRI Champions Network
About the RRI Champions Network
Many dedicated individuals on campuses and surrounding communities have been doing exceptional work supporting refugees and other forcibly displaced persons on their campuses. But their work is often siloed, or may go unnoticed by their colleagues and campus or system leadership.
In order to build strength in numbers and generate greater public visibility, NASH established the RRI Champions Network, connecting over 650 faculty, students, staff, and wider campus community “Champions” across the country working on refugee welcome and resettlement. In recognition of student leadership across campuses, a dedicated RRI Student Champions Network has also been launched in 2024.
The RRI provides technical and strategic support to RRI Champions; organizes quarterly meetings of the RRI Champions Network; and elevates RRI Champions’ impacts across NASH’s social media. Through the network, RRI Champions support and learn from each other and test out new ways to make their campuses more welcoming to newcomers.
The RRI provides technical and strategic support to RRI Champions; organizes quarterly meetings of the RRI Champions Network; engages in public visibility highlighting RRI Champions’ impacts across NASH’s social media; and connects campuses to activities listed below. Through the network, RRI Champions support and learn from each other and test out new ways to engage in making their campuses more welcoming to newcomers. In 2024, concerted efforts are planned to expand student leaders' participation in the network.
Featured Champions
NASH RRI Catalyst Fund Awards
NASH’s Catalyst Fund was created to recognize and incentivize NASH members’ big ideas that, once proven to work, have the potential to be scaled not only across a single system but amongst peers around the country.
The RRI Catalyst Fund seeks to seed, test, and scale new and existing innovations on campuses that take creative and impactful approaches to welcoming and supporting refugees and other forcibly displaced persons.
The Fund makes awards ranging $5,000-$50,000 to NASH member systems and their institutions. Awards issued thus far have had a catalytic impact on local refugee resettlement efforts.
For example:
- Early and modest investment in 'RI Reconnect' is credited with seeding $8M in state funding in Rhode Island to expand access to higher education and workforce development for new arrivals in the State
- Seed investment in scaling its partner's program, Every Campus A Refuge (ECAR), across the Washington State University system
and - Supplementary support to the Kentucky Commonwealth Humanitarian Assistance Scholarship co-designed by NASH, is helping to create a peer-to-peer navigator program at Western Kentucky University
- Strategic funding to the Colorado State University system in order to convene the State's actors to explore a consolidated service delivery model for support to newcomers across the State, in which the public university serves as the backbone structure
Monitoring and evaluation stipend to the University of Maryland will equip it with the opportunity to conduct impact interviews, and glean lessons from its recent and historic hosting of Afghan refugee families