Cultural Brokers & Translation Services 

Cultural Broker Services

When a large immigrant and refugee population arrives in a new area, there are often significant gaps in cultural understanding – both from the perspective of American-born Mainers and New Mainers who have migrated to Maine communities. To help solve these issues, the Immigrant Resource Center of Maine provides significant cultural broker services to help facilitate a growing understanding and ability to work together between different cultures.

IRCM believes in not duplicating services or having separate services for New Mainers, but helping to adapt existing services to meet the needs of immigrant and refugee populations in our Maine communities. This work is the product of long-lasting partnerships our staff has built over the last 15 years. We believe in a “top down” approach, which means that we work with the broader systems to help affect change on the ground.
​
As part of IRCM’s cultural brokerage work, IRCM staff are available to provide support to both New Mainer families and to the systems New Mainers must engage with. This includes, but is not limited to, mediation efforts between New Mainers and several different systems: schools, service providers, law enforcement, healthcare providers, government agencies, and neighbors.

Translation Services

IRCM staff are available to help the increase in communication efforts between New Mainers and the community and state agencies they engage with. IRCM ensures community access to trained and qualified interpreters who are culturally competent, do not have a conflict of interest, know the service structure of the services New Mainers access most, and are educated in both the difficulties New Mainers are facing as well as the difficulties of the services they are accessing.

Contact IRCM staff for additional information on cultural broker or translation services.

We are uniquely positioned to look at and know about the existing systems and to help those systems meet the emerging needs of our communities.