The Center for Immigrant and Refugee Community Leadership and Empowerment (CIRCLE) in Amherst, originally funded by the state Office of Refugees and Immigrants (ORI), is part of a statewide partnership between newcomer communities and the University of Massachusetts. CIRCLE has additional sites in Boston and Lowell.

We at Amherst CIRCLE offer collective leadership and community development programs for local Cambodian, Vietnamese, Hmong, Tibetan, Russian, and Somali groups. Under the guidance and mentorship of our director, Dr. Sally Habana-Hafner, graduate students in community development and undergraduate students in service learning provide training, field support, and monitoring programs. CIRCLE offers both graduate and undergraduate students an evolving curriculum in leadership and community development as well as community service learning. More importantly, we model a form of collective leadership drawing on the strengths of all participants.

We consider all participants of CIRCLE teachers and learners. Newcomer leaders pass on their skills and knowledge to developing new generations of leaders, undergraduate students of diverse cultural background mentor youth of color for education and empowerment; faculty and staff with international development experience facilitate the exchange of learning between the academic and newcomer worlds.

We work together like an extended family to bridge the divide of culture, race, religion, class, gender, and generations; and to cross the barriers between communities and institutions. Click here to see a graph of CIRCLE as an extended family.