Community Engagement at
Bringing Spokane together to welcome immigrants and refugees
Manzanita House is all about collaboration. We deeply believe that serving immigrants and refugees requires a communal effort. That’s why we strive to bring education and resources to immigrants and refugees through community outreach and events. Some of our ongoing events include small business workshops, Tea Tasting & Bazaars, health education & outreach, and our Back-to-School Block Party. Our events connect hundreds of immigrants to essential resources and service providers. We build strong partnerships with other immigrant-serving organizations to ensure a wide reach. We also engage the community through volunteer opportunities, donation drives, internships, and service projects.
Community Education and Implementation Program (CEIP)
Our Community Education and Implementation Program (CEIP) empowers local agencies to establish, through educational training and workshops:
improved intercultural communication
cultural competency
empathetic approaches when working with and for the immigrant and refugee communities.
We create and facilitate training and provide support for both providers and leaders, in order to help organizations serve specific immigrant communities better.
Body- Manzanita House engaged in a preliminary assessment with members of immigrant communities and found qualitative data of the following findings:
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Members of immigrant communities experience high levels of stress and anxiety due to lack of culturally relevant practices when navigating social service agencies (Including medical services, non-profit supports, etc.)
Organizations are struggling with the retention of clients from diverse populations.
Staff at organizations are experiencing high levels of burnout due to the number of needs from clients from diverse populations, including not having the tools or supports needed to provide culturally relevant services or understand the needs of those they serve.
Members of immigrant communities are at times engaging in inappropriate use of services due to lack of cultural clarity when navigating systems.
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Based on these findings, Manzanita House has worked to develop a program that supports both members of the community and organizations to bridge the gaps and find cultural attunement with the goal of supporting organizations to serve specific immigrant communities better. While many organizations engage in DEI training and support, we know that organizations rarely or seldom engage in improvement processes that are specific to the cultural values and story behind a specific community that’s being served. The CEIP focuses on providing support and education for cultural attunement when working with a specific immigrant community, determined by the agency or organization engaged in the program.
Goals of CEIP:
To work with Agencies, Organizations, and Immigrants to provide clear cross-cultural awareness as a means of increasing clarity and efficacy of services in partnership with the guidance and leadership of immigrant communities.
To Guide clients into culturally responsive, informed, and relevant practice. We help equip service providers in Spokane to better serve Global Neighbors in our city with excellence.
To prepare and build capacity within various agencies in Spokane. to serve and assist families in their long-term transition to life in Spokane, WA
If this sounds like something your agency could benefit from, please email us pcastaneda@mhspokane.org or call (509) 309-8404
“In 2023 I had the amazing opportunity to support Manzanita House with the Cultural Education and Implementation Program (CEIP) Pilot.”
-Pia Johnson Barreto
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It is beyond exciting to see an organization recognize the need to push for equitable systems in partnership with organizations and to move beyond their own ecosystem and reach. The CEIP offers a new opportunity for larger organizations to learn from their local immigrant and refugee communities, re-evaluate the efficacy of their services and sets our immigrant/refugee community leaders in the driver seat to teach and inform organizations while being properly compensated for their labor. I am so proud of the wonderful work Manzanita House is doing in reimagining education that centers the immigrant and refugee voice and truly believe every organization should have access to this amazing consultancy and training experience. The work around CEIP offers immense potential and opportunity to strengthen, support and co-create spaces and relationships between larger organizations and different immigrant/refugee communities as it challenges everyone to reimagine collective care.
“CHAS Health was honored to work with Manzanita House to pilot the CEIP program. “
-Shelby Lambdin,
CHAS Health
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Leveraging an external perspective to better understand areas for improvement within our organization was extremely valuable in helping us to craft our broader cultural and linguistic service strategies as an organization. This type of organizational evaluation is something that the healthcare system as a whole would greatly benefit from to help better understand ways to best serve the diverse population of patients that we serve.
“The CEIP training that we did at my workplace was really helpful to understand other employees’ worldviews. “
– Tyana Kelley, NE Community Center
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It gave us space to hear stories about coming to the U.S. and what that process was like. We had never had that kind of staff meeting before. It was also good to brainstorm how we can change as a group to improve the experience of those we serve