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A portable workshop for practitioners

AI literacy for frontline immigrant and refugee services

A short, portable workshop that helps frontline staff at immigrant- and refugee-serving organizations use AI tools well: confidently for the tasks AI is good at, and carefully for the tasks where it fails. It is agency-agnostic, so any organization can run it with its own staff and its own policies.

What this is about

This workshop is about generative AI: the chatbots and writing assistants that produce text, such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. It is not about every kind of AI. The point is the tools your staff and clients are already typing into.

Who this is for

Settlement caseworkers, benefits and resource navigators, legal-aid intake staff, ESL teachers, health navigators, and volunteers. No technical background is assumed.

How to run this

Part 1 is the safety spine. It runs about 2 to 3 hours as a full workshop, or you can pick the modules you need. Part 2 is a shorter practical track, about an hour, that you can run as a group or hand out as a reference. Print the ground-rules card at the end for the whole team.

This is a research prototype curriculum. It is a training aid, not a certified course, a clinical protocol, or a substitute for your organization's own policies. Adapt it to your site and supervision before use.

How to use this workshop

Start with Part 1

Run the nine safety modules in order, or open just the one you need most.

Read the evidence, run the activity

Each module carries the research behind it and a short activity a facilitator can lead.

Take it to your team

Print the ground-rules card and share the Part 2 toolkit with your staff.

Part 1

Understanding and using AI

Five short modules on what the tool does, how to check it, and how to keep safe use in place once the workshop ends. The deep-dive pages explain what the model is doing when it answers, and the practice toolkit follows.

Using the tool

Make it stick

Deep dive

What the model is actually doing

Optional. Two companion pages for staff who want to know what a model is doing when it answers, and how the models differ from one another.

Practice toolkit

Open the practical toolkit

Everyday assists that save time, working across languages, agentic AI in plain words, cloud and data sharing, version control, and a checklist for choosing a tool responsibly. Includes the prompt mini-guide and ready-to-use recipe cards.

Everyday work

Level up your use

Manage it well

Analyze and communicate

Part 2

AI and ethics

Four modules on the harm this technology can do to the people you serve. Client data comes first, then bias, then where the tool came from and what it costs, and last the language gap and the right to an interpreter.

Print for your team Our team's AI ground rules

A one-page printable card: what to use AI for, what to always verify, and what never to put into an AI tool, plus the interpreter right. Print it and adapt it with the tools and languages your agency uses.

Open the printable card →
If your agency wants to go further: guidance and policy templates

This workshop covers the same backbone that mainstream nonprofit AI curricula share: plain-language basics, verify every output, protect client data, watch for bias, adopt a written acceptable-use policy, keep use mission-aligned and human-centered, and start with low-risk tasks before high-stakes casework. It adds the parts those curricula tend to under-cover for immigrant and refugee services: the language gap, immigration-status privacy and surveillance, misinformation in client languages, and the interpreter right as a legal obligation. The resources below are reputable starting points if your agency wants to go further or write its own policy.

  • Switchboard (Office of Refugee Resettlement TA hub). The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Resettlement Work. switchboardta.org
  • Legal Services Corporation. Considerations for Integrating Generative AI into Legal Aid. lsc.gov
  • Data and Society. Poverty Lawgorithms (Michele Gilman), including a section on immigrant surveillance. datasociety.net
  • NTEN. Artificial Intelligence Framework for an Equitable World. nten.org
  • NTEN. Generative AI Use Policy Template for the Social Sector (2024). nten.org (PDF)
  • TechSoup. How to Create a Generative AI Use Policy. techsoup.org
  • Project Evident and Stanford HAI. Equitable AI Adoption. projectevident.org
  • UNESCO. AI Competency Framework for Teachers (2024). unesco.org
Sources

This workshop is a research prototype curriculum, not a certified course or clinical protocol. The findings below come from peer-reviewed studies except where noted as gray literature. Some points about specific languages are extrapolated from the general pattern that AI performs worse in lower-resource languages; per-language evidence for many of your clients' languages does not yet exist. Adapt this workshop to your agency's policies before use.

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