The City of Winston-Salem was honored with a 2017 City Cultural Diversity Award from the National League of Cities. The award was given in recognition of the Winston-Salem BIC Newcomers’ Pipeline.
BIC, or Building Integrated Communities, is an initiative of the The Latino Migration Project and is supported by the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation. BIC is a multi-year community planning process that helps North Carolina local governments to successfully engage with local foreign-born, refugee and Hispanic/Latinx residents in order to improve relationships, enhance communication and promote newcomers’ civic participation and leadership in local government.
As a result of working with BIC, local governments and diverse community stakeholders gain tools and build capacity to generate locally relevant strategies for promoting economic development and strengthening newcomers’ educational advancement.
The forthcoming pipeline program was developed by the Winston-Salem Human Relations Department and diverse project stakeholders during the city’s 2014-2017 partnership with the BIC initiative at UNC-Chapel Hill. The pipeline will provide an integrated, efficient and accessible way for foreign-born and Hispanic/Latinx residents to learn about municipal and community resources related to education, fair housing, faith, health, language access, legal services, public safety and transportation.
