Looking for a way to engage your community around issues of immigration and the border?
BorderLinks leads workshops for groups staying at BorderLinks and those who wish to have a shorter educational experience for their class, church, or civic group. Workshops are interactive learning experiences that cover issues such as immigration and economic policy, border history, privilege, and frameworks for action. BorderLinks can bring the workshop to you!
If you are interested in setting up a workshop, please fill out the form at the bottom of this page. You can also direct questions to Cailan Cordwell at cailan@borderlinks.org.
NEW! Virtual Programing
With commitment to our community safety during the COVID-19 pandemic, we have adapted our work. Virtual workshops are available now. Due to the large number of workshop requests we are receiving at this time, we ask that you fill out the workshop inquiry form below to the best of your ability, at least 3-4 weeks before your intended dates, even if it's tentative, and we will follow up! Thank you.
Here's a sampling of the workshops we offer:
Legal Immigration Simulation (1.5-2 hours): This workshop gives participants a simulated experience of navigating the legal system as potential immigrants, to help answer the commonly encountered question, “Why don’t all migrants enter legally?"
Immigration History Timeline (2-2.5 hours): This workshop examines U.S policies historically which have both directly and indirectly influenced immigration and migration, and how this correlates with current events. This workshop allows for a deeper discussion around the root causes of migration, as well as who benefits from the current system of enforcement and laws. Special attention is paid to how U.S. policies have in particular influenced the U.S/Mexico borderlands.
Solidarity Framework (1.5-2 hours): This workshop invites participants to think critically about how we define “solidarity” and reflect on what solidarity in practice looks like for long term, substantive social change. This includes questions about creating and building meaningful relationships, and positioning within the work. Participants will explore the differences between an ally, accomplice, and co-conspirator. This workshop looks at how stories of migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and people in transit are narrated, and how stories of movement-building highlight migrants as agents of social change.
Mass Incarceration Workshop (2-2.5 hours): This workshop investigates the phenomenon of widespread imprisonment in the United States. How did the US become the world’s foremost prison society? How does this impact immigrants? What role do private prisons play? This workshop seeks to answer these questions dispel common myths about the causes of and solutions to mass incarceration.
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At BorderLinks, we are committed to the lives, health, and safety of our staff, participants, community partners, and wider public health. We want to do our part to prevent exposure and curb the pandemic. This is why our staff and board has decided to all get vaccinated and require both staff and participants to be vaccinated, with the legal exception of people who are not vaccinated for medical or religious reasons. We recognize that we have the privilege of access to the vaccination and want to be in solidarity with those at most risk in our community.
We require participants to take a COVID test 3 days beforehand to have a negative COVID result, and participants will also have to take a rapid rest when arriving to BorderLinks. We will be implementing social distancing and mask-wearing protocol aligned with the most up-to-date CDC and local health department guidelines.
We are not requiring community partners to get vaccinated because we recognize hesitancy present in some communities of color from the history of racist medical practices in the United States as well as limited access to the vaccine. Most of our community partners are vaccinated; for those who are not, we will make appropriate arrangements to keep everyone safe, which could include outdoor or virtual presentations.
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With community, participant, and staff safety in mind, BorderLinks has decided to set a clear guideline based on COVID metrics for when to switch in-person programs to a virtual format. BorderLinks will not conduct in-person programming if daily new COVID cases in Pima County are over 100 per 100,000 two weeks prior to the first day of the program.* Practically, this means that a BorderLinks staff member will check-in with groups who have a scheduled program 14 days before it begins. If the data shows that daily new COVID cases are over 100 per 100K, the decision will be made to switch the program to virtual. If under 100 per 100K, the in-person program can move forward.
While the metric of daily new cases is not the only one we look at to make decisions about COVID safety, it does indicate the severity of the virus’ presence in the community. Daily cases over 100 per 100K are extreme and have only occurred in Pima County when COVID is spiking drastically. We have observed that COVID is more likely to strike closer to home during these spikes, has caused unreasonable stress for staff and participants, and has forced unsustainable safety measures during in-person programs.
BorderLinks continues to follow its comprehensive COVID safety protocol when in-person programming is conducted—this includes mask wearing if COVID cases are high, testing, vaccination, and more. Delegations and workshops should be scheduled as soon as possible in order to secure your desired dates. Some dates are already being secured for 2024. Please email Josue Saldivar for more information at josue@borderlinks.org
Thank you for your understanding during this unprecedented and difficult-to-navigate global pandemic as we strive to keep you, our staff, and community safe.
*We will be referring to this particular website for this metric which states that “our daily new cases number is a seven-day average divided by every 100K people in a location”: https://covidactnow.org/us/arizona-az/county/pima_county
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