BRIDGE
Building Refugee and Immigrant Degrees for Graduate Education (BRIDGE)
What is BRIDGE?
While immigrants and refugees make numerous contributions to the larger society, they often face significant challenges ranging from language and educational barriers to trauma and multiple forms of discrimination.
A wide range of human services agencies in both the public and private sectors have attempted to address these and other needs, but their effectiveness frequently has been limited by the absence of professional social work staff who are members of the refugee and immigrant groups being served. When social workers from the same culture are not present, problems may arise due to inability to establish trusting relationships, communication barriers, misunderstandings about needs, failure to recognize or draw on existing community strengths and assets, a tendency to overlook nontraditional service settings and natural helping networks, inflexible approaches, inappropriate service interventions, and a general lack of cultural competence.
The overall aim of the BRIDGE program is to open up access to graduate social work education for refugees and immigrants, thereby addressing critical needs in the human services workforce. Hence, this program will increase the number of professionally trained social workers from underserved culturally and linguistically diverse newcomer populations. The name is indicative, since the unique components and supports of this innovative program will provide a transitional bridge from these ethnic communities to academic communities where social work is taught at the graduate level.
