TU co-sponsoring 2008 Baltimore Immigration Summit
Event to bring together academics, service providers, activists, community leaders and others working with and for immigrants in the region
“ReGenerations: Communities, Opportunities and Challenges” serves as the theme of the 2008 Baltimore Immigration Summit, a free one-day event co-sponsored by TU, the Jewish Museum of Maryland, PNC Bank, and the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University. The summit will be held on Fri., Nov. 21, from 8 a.m. to
4 p.m., at the Burkshire Marriott Conference Hotel, 10 West Burke Avenue, in Towson.
Baltimore’s growing and diverse immigrant population is an important part of the city’s resurgence. The summit will bring together TU academics, other local academics, service providers, activists, community leaders and others working with and for immigrants in our region. Elizabeth Clifford, summit coordinator and professor in TU’s department of sociology, anthropology and criminal justice, says 140 people will be in attendance, including an advanced high school English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) class.
Two speakers from diverse backgrounds will deliver the keynote address, "Multigenerational Perspectives on Immigration": Holocaust survivor Martha Weiman, 1st vice president for the Baltimore Jewish Council; and student Cecilia Lopez, a government relations fellow with the Hispanic College Fund.
“ReGenerations” has a dual meaning,” says Clifford. “First, ‘ReGenerations’ means about generations – Boomers, Generation X, or Millennial, including first and second generation immigrants. Second, regeneration refers to how immigrants help regenerate the city, region, state and country.
“For example, in the realm of health,” Clifford notes, “there are health needs for specific generations of immigrants (children, seniors), and there is also the way immigrant health care providers help regenerate our hospitals and other health care institutions.”
A full schedule of events, along with directions, can be found on the summit Web site, http://www.towson.edu/baltimoreimmigrationsummit/.