The Cultural Orientation Resource (COR) Center provides important orientation resources for refugee newcomers and service providers throughout the United States and overseas. Housed at the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL), the COR Center combines CAL's linguistic expertise, the cross-cultural and technical knowledge of COR's many consultants, and the field experience of refugee service practitioners.
The COR Center's work builds on a long history in refugee resettlement at CAL that goes back to 1975, the dawn of modern-day refugee resettlement, when the U.S. admitted more than 130,000 Southeast Asian refugees after the sudden collapse of U.S. supported governments in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Responding quickly to the crisis, CAL joined a national effort to ease the adjustment of refugees to a country that they knew little about and that knew little about them. CAL provided local communities with practical, easy-to-understand information about the refugees—who they were as people, what they had experienced as refugees, and what they needed as newcomers.
Since that time, the nature of CAL's work in refugee resettlement has taken different forms, and its focus has shifted from a single area of the world— Southeast Asia—to virtually every region of the globe. Throughout these many changes, a basic purpose behind CAL's work has remained constant: to serve as a central resource on refugees and their resettlement needs.
Today, through the COR Center, CAL focuses on a critical element of refugee resettlement and integration: cultural and community orientation. The COR Center's mission is to increase awareness regarding the likely characteristics and needs of incoming refugee groups, as well as to facilitate culturally and linguistically appropriate orientation training for these newcomers to the United States. The COR Center accomplishes this through the development of publications regarding new refugee groups; design of orientation resources and materials; provision of skills development opportunities and technical assistance, both in the U.S. and overseas; and facilitation of information exchange between various partners in the resettlement community.
The COR Center works closely with the various stakeholders involved in refugee resettlement, such as U.S. resettlement staff, overseas orientation trainers, former refugees, community-based organizations, mainstream social service providers, employers, volunteers, teachers, members of charitable organizations, and church and community leaders.
