“From humble beginnings as a grassroots celebration of values, Welcoming Week has grown over the last decade to become a worldwide celebration. This week, cities and towns across the globe unite to share the message that everyone — no matter where we've come from — can belong in the place we now call home, and our communities are better for it.” —Rachel Perić, Executive Director, Welcoming America
Welcoming Week is an annual, international campaign that celebrates the work in communities to become welcoming places for all, including immigrants. Launched in 2012 by Welcoming America and its members, Welcoming Week poses an opportunity for communities to cultivate the energy that’s needed to sustain long-term welcoming efforts through events and initiatives that foster connection and collaboration between immigrants and non-immigrants. This year, over 600 events took place across the world as a part of Welcoming Week. We were grateful to facilitate two of the events that came alive in Middle Tennessee.
We kicked off Welcoming Week with a family festival at The Community Farm at Mill Ridge. The Community Farm is a thriving agricultural space that supports the growing efforts of over 80 families from diverse backgrounds each year and is stewarded in partnership with Metro Parks and Friends of Mill Ridge. Because the farm already acts as a welcoming space for us to grow food, share knowledge and participate in community, it felt like a natural place to invite our community to connect over food, land, and conversation.
Puppet show from Wishing Chair Productions and the Nashville Public Library.
Our face painting station was a huge hit with the kids — the line never let up!
Community members painted a mural on our new water storage tanks.
The day, which ended up being beautiful, included activities for everyone! From a puppet show to a guided hike, a community art project to a unique educational opportunity about the history of the land, there were ample ways to engage, learn and play.
The centerpiece of the family festival was the spread of food, brought by many generous guests and representing a wide variety of cultures. At lunchtime, nearly 150 of us gathered together to eat, share and celebrate the ways that we all are both guest and host, and can welcome one another by simply sharing a meal or initiating a conversation. It felt fitting to read “The Honorable Harvest,” as shared by Robin Wall Kimmerer, in three different languages during the meal. Its indigenous wisdom implores:
Know the ways of the ones who take care of you, so that you may take care of them.
Introduce yourself. Be accountable as the one who comes asking for life.
Ask permission before taking. Abide by the answer.
Never take the first. Never take the last.
Take only what you need.
Take only that which is given.
Never take more than half. Leave some for others.
Harvest in a way that minimizes harm.
Use it respectfully. Never waste what you have taken.
Share.
Give thanks for what you have been given.
Give a gift, in reciprocity for what you have taken.
Sustain the ones who sustain you and the earth will last forever.
Later in the week, our team hosted a Community Conversation that examined the work of welcoming. Three community leaders with vastly different experiences and areas of focus found common threads around what shifts our city could make to meet the needs of a diverse population. As conversation opened up over shared chai and sambusas, we dreamt together about how new residents might feel more welcomed upon their arrival to Nashville.
Our discussion quickly turned to the importance of public space in fostering a welcoming environment. Kipkosgei Magut, who serves as the health education coordinator with the Nashville International Center for Empowerment (NICE), shared that while NICE has the resources to host regular pop-up health events for refugee families, they often struggle to secure a free, public location. Brenda Perez, who has worked as a community organizer in Nashville for several years, noted the amount of undeveloped land around the city — and how those open fields could be completely changed by setting up two simple goal posts.
Katherine Dennis, the community engagement manager for Friends of Mill Ridge Park, shared how the newly opened Mill Ridge Park is working to develop a space offering the very opportunities that seem to be missing from Nashville public life. When we create intentional infrastructure to invite people into public spaces, it naturally cultivates community.
Kipkosgei Magut, Katherine Dennis, Elizabeth Langgle-Martin, and Brenda Perez.
And community is at the heart of a more welcoming Nashville. It’s so important to publicly proclaim our welcoming values so that those around us, both old-timers and newcomers, know that Nashville is a place we want them to stay. Everyone has something of value to contribute to our shared future, and that future is brighter when we know our neighbors, gather together, and share a meal.