AFSC - Fresno
Pan Valley Institute
The Pan Valley Institute (PVI) creates a place for immigrants and refugees to gather, learn from each other, and rebuild their world. Inspired by the historic Highlander Institute in Tennessee, which served as an important training base for the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century, the Pan Valley Institute grassroots leaders together from many communities to work together for more immigrant participation in the life of the Valley and of our nation.
Our Vision
We provide a safe and welcoming space where immigrants, refugees, and others who work for immigrant rights come together to talk, create, and learn as equals. We hope to see California's Central Valley become a place where all people are respected, differences are embraced, and immigrants actively participate in civic life.
Popular Education
The Pan Valley Institute organizes intensive educational gatherings where people can work and reside together, away from distractions. When needed, AFSC finds resource people to bring in specific information and skills.
At the gatherings a facilitator draws out what the participants already know about the problems they face and encourages them to respect their own experience and ideas. Participants listen to each other seriously. The role of specialists is limited and carefully defined. Instead, we encourage group problem solving. At the end of the gathering, participants make commitments for action (next steps) and prepare to carry on the work back home. Organizers follow up with phone calls, visits, and more gatherings.
The goal is to create new networks of people who are different from each other, solving common problems. What comes out of these gatherings, trainings, and conversations is up to the participants.
Accomplishments
PVI helped build a network of immigrant women from very different ethnic communities throughout California's Central Valley. Together, they produced a calendar of their own pictures and stories and later a book called Immigrant Women: A Road to the Future.
A group of youth from Hmong, Mixteco, Mexican, Arab, Persian, and American Indian communities grew out of the women's group and created their own theater piece about peer pressure, the loss of their home cultures, and conflicts between generations.
As part of the Tamejavi process, the Pan Valley Institute also brought together indigenous peoples of Mexico and California to talk about their concerns for culture and development, territory, and mobility.
PVI collaborated with Pacific News Servie to build a network of ethnic media outlets in the Central Valley.
PVI founded the Central Valley-wide cultural festival and learning process called Tamejavi. Learning Groups prepare for the festival and help immigrants appreciate what they share and what they face together as residents of California's Central Valley. The Tamejavi Festival is only one, very visible, outcome of months of encounters between immigrants in these learning groups.
^ Top of page |
Email this page