Leaders of Tomorrow: Immigrant & Refugee Youth. A Guidebook on Leadership Development. Updated

A sense of belonging for any young person is core to the human experience--it encompasses how much a student feels accepted, respected, and included at school and in other contexts. For youth, adolescence is a time of exploration and one where they naturally wrestle with questions of belonging and sense of self as they transition to emerging adulthood. For immigrant and refugee youth, adolescence might also bring with it the experience of leaving their home country and learning a new language and culture. In today's world there are also new and unique stressors that cannot be ignored which are caused by heightened political discourse around immigration. Furthermore, the conversation surrounding belonging is urgently needed given the detrimental impact of COVID-19 on the mental health and wellbeing of youth. In order to answer some of most pressing questions for how to best serve youth today, IEL staff went to the field in Fall of 2022 to gather information via surveys and focus group conversations with both youth-serving organizations in the IEL network and immigrant and refugee youth to find out the following: (1) how to define a sense of belonging; (2) what barriers and challenges exist in creating the conditions necessary for facilitating a sense of belonging for immigrant and refugee youth; and (3) how to promote belonging in schools and other settings that serve youth. The report includes practical applications for youth-serving partners to embed and boost a sense of belonging in spaces for immigrant and refugee youth.