The WES Mariam Assefa Fund has identified several priorities to guide its efforts in 2019 and 2020. In the near-term, the fund is focused on supporting organizations and solutions working to address issues in five areas of immigrant integration and workforce development:

• Skill-building: Solutions that equip immigrants and refugees with the skills to succeed in the workplace of today and tomorrow
• Employer talent practices: Initiatives that encourage employers to tap into immigrant and refugee talent
• Innovation and experimentation: Innovations that can accelerate scale and deepen the impact of immigrant integration and workforce development interventions
• Leadership and capacity-building: Initiatives that build leadership capacity within immigrant and refugee communities
• Ecosystem development: Approaches to grow the ecosystem of supportive funders, policymakers, educators, employers and service providers