The goals of the NSARC are as follows:
- To establish a strong and sustainable partnership between the university, grassroots organizations, and service providers, for the development and well-being of the Latino community of eastern North Carolina.
- To address the felt-needs of the Latino community through an organic strategy combining research, service-learning, implementation of solutions, and advocacy.
- To develop methodologies and models of collaborative action-research that respond to the social and cultural characteristics of the Latino community of eastern North Carolina.
In pursuit of these goals, the NSARC focuses its research and action projects on five priority areas:
- Community and capacity building. Projects in this area contribute to building organizational capacity in grassroots organizations, developing models of leadership and civic engagement in the Latino community, and building bridging social capital in the community.
- Culture. Activities aimed at studying, enhancing, and celebrating the culture of Latinos in eastern North Carolina as well as their contributions to larger society. These activities will help shape the public image of Latinos, enhance their connections with larger society, and help strengthen cultural identity.
- Education. Research and implementation activities dealing with the key educational issues affecting the Latino community of eastern North Carolina. These may include retention and drop-pout of school-age children, access to post-secondary education, learning English as a second language, and health education.
- Health and human services. Activities related to accessing and using health and human services, promoting healthy lifestyles, and changing conditions of health inequity affecting the Latino population of eastern North Carolina.
- Language and Community. This programmatic area of interest focuses on the awareness raising and promotion of the indigenous languages in the (im)migrant communities of eastern North Carolina. Using participatory research methodologies, projects in this area will ultimately aim at promoting a sense of community by strengthening the importance of the indigenous language(s).
- Migration. Research and implementation activities aimed at increasing the understanding of the migration and settlement experience of Latinos in eastern North Carolina, and to finding solutions to problems associated with that experience. These activities will take local, regional, and transnational perspectives.
