Community Connections

Lift the Children is host organization for the Community Connections professional exchange program, which is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and administered through World Learning. In 2008, Lift the Children hosted child welfare professionals from Russia on a program entitled Community-based Assistance to Vulnerable Children and domestic violence professionals from Ukraine on the program Counteraction to Domestic Violence. We linked these professionals to a broad range of organizations and agencies providing services for children, women and families in the Sacramento area. In May 2009, we expect to host another program for Russian professionals that will connect the participants with professionals from nonprofit and governmental agencies working in the area of Maternal and Child Health at local, state and national levels. All programs include volunteer opportunities to provide home stays for the visiting professionals.

We collaborate with our colleagues at the Child Abuse Prevention Center to design and implement our Community Connections programs, which include education and training workshops delivered at our state-of-the art training center. The program enables the participating professionals to return home from this 3-week program with new models and strategies in child protection and family strengthening that can be adapted and implemented in their own countries to improve conditions for vulnerable children and families. We are grateful for the help of the CAP Center’s network of local professionals and direct service providers for opening their doors and invigorating our programs with enthusiasm and support for this unique professional exchange opportunity.

Since its inception under the State Department’s Bureau of Cultural Affairs, the broad public diplomacy goals of Community Connections have been to contribute to economic and democratic reform and to promote mutual understanding in Eurasia – providing visitors broad exposure to U.S. society and helping to create personal and professional connections with Americans, advancing democratic and free-market principles in a region where those principles are still tenuous. The Community Connections program continues to promote the overall US Embassy and USAID goals of supporting public diplomacy and the specific goals of Community Connections.  This program:

  1. Exposes participants to the institutions and challenges of a democratic, free market society;
  2. Inspires participants to implement change in their home countries;
  3. Builds public-private partnerships; and
  4. Creates professional linkages between the American host communities and the participants' home communities.