Creating community: Facilitating an engaged resettlement process for refugee status families in the Salt Lake Valley to promote greater self-reliance

There are approximately 12 million refugees in the world today and roughly 50,000 of these individuals have resettled to the Salt Lake Valley. Upon their arrival to Utah, families with refugee status are paired with one of a small number of organizations to assist them in the process of resettlement. The ultimate goal of this resettlement process is for families of refugee status to achieve self-reliance. Many barriers to this goal exist in the resettlement process. Despite current efforts to overcome such barriers, it remains that self-reliance remains a challenge among the resettling refugee population. Models exist that describe approaches to achieving self-reliance. For instance, Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) is a model that has the aim of partnering experts with communities to pursue goals for "achieving social change", and in this process, build greater community self-reliance in support of increased self-determination. Central to this and several other self-reliance-based models is that they build upon existing community structures. In fact, the first step to CPBR is to identify a community partner. One of the challenges for the current Salt Lake Valley resettling refugee population is establishing fully functioning, comprehensive community units upon which capacity can be built and self-reliance can be developed. It is therefore essential to develop effective approaches for establishing community within resettling refugee population as a first step towards promoting greater self-reliance. Recommendations are provided that may aid in this process.