Since Common Ground began in Boise in the fall of 2008, over 300 hundred volunteers, more than 70 refugees and more than a dozen organizations, schools and churches have been involved.

If you were to ask each individual involved with us, you would get a variety of answers, such as, Common Ground is

• about refugees
• about job training
• about organic farming
• about English as a second language
• a great place to volunteer
• a place to learn about gardening
• where I get to know people from all over the world
• a place to fulfill my longing to contribute to the “greening” of America
• a group of the most energetic folks I  know
• a place my whole family can work together to make a difference
• changing lives
• fun and innovative
• and more…

While all this is true, Common Ground is officially, a program of The Momentum Group focused on providing experiential job training for the refugee community resulting in our trainees’ ability to find, perform and retain jobs. Whether we are teaching in the class room, on a job site visit, working in the garden, interacting with the Mayor’s Council on Refugee Resettlement, the International Refugee Committee or the Boise Fry Company, everything we do focuses on helping our newest Americans become economically independent in their new home country.

In the next post, we’ll explore what it looks like to be “Common Ground.”