Toolkit

This year, Welcoming Week is a call to come together as individuals and groups – to celebrate our strengths and differences – and recognize that we’re at our best when We’re All In.

Welcoming Week is on a journey to build a world that’s all in on valuing diverse perspectives, backgrounds, experiences, and cultures. Through your local events and special initiatives, share how your community is modeling this “We’re All In” approach, too.

In many ways, we intend for “We’re All In” to be the first half of a longer message that supports your community’s interests. When you’re planning and promoting Welcoming Week events, you might consider grounding them in messages like:

• We’re All In for Democracy
• We’re All In for Voting Rights
• We’re All In for The Next Generation
• We’re All In for Sharing Our Cultures
• We’re All In for Healthy Communities
• We’re All In for a Happy and Healthy Planet

How can your community show that “We’re All In” this Welcoming Week and every day? We encourage you to get creative with how you frame your Welcoming Week events this year.

In addition to the main theme, you can leverage daily themes based on the Welcoming Standard, which are the framework areas that we believe make truly welcoming communities. Additionally, communities in the U.S. or Australia may choose to celebrate Citizenship Day, which takes place every year on September 17.

The daily themes are optional, suggested topics to guide your messaging and activities for Welcoming Week. Participants are welcome to activate one or all themes as part of their Welcoming Week plans.

• Friday, September 13: Launch day
• Saturday, September 14: Civic Engagement
• Sunday, September 15: Connected Communities
• Monday, September 16: Economic Development
• Tuesday, September 17: Citizenship Day (U.S. and Australia)
• Wednesday, September 18: Education
• Thursday, September 19: Equitable Access
• Friday, September 20: Government and Community Leadership
• Saturday, September 21: Safe Communities
• Sunday, September 22: Closing day

For each day, highlight examples in your community that demonstrate how the theme is fostering belonging for residents. For example:

• On the first Saturday, focus on civic engagement by sharing voter registration materials and reminding your neighbors that Welcoming Week is a great time to register to vote.
• On Monday, focus on economic development by promoting local immigrant- and refugee-owned businesses.
• On the last Friday, focus on government and community leadership through a Welcoming Week proclamation or highlighting how residents can get involved in welcoming newcomers after Welcoming Week ends.

Welcoming Week At Its Core

• Celebrated in communities around the globe, Welcoming Week is an annual campaign that connects neighbors of all backgrounds through community-informed activities and events.
• Welcoming Week is an actionable, holistic strategy that provides individuals and communities the opportunity to publicly proclaim welcoming values, foster a mutual understanding between immigrants and non-immigrants, and build a deeper sense of belonging for all.
• Now in its 12th year, Welcoming Week 2024 is a call for individuals and groups to come together and celebrate their strengths and differences. This year’s theme, We’re All In, invites communities to showcase how they’re building places that value all perspectives, backgrounds, experiences, and cultures.

The Bigger Picture, and How Welcoming Week Fits Into It

General Messages

• Welcoming Week is led by Welcoming America, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that leads a movement of inclusive communities becoming more prosperous by ensuring everyone belongs. Welcoming America believes that all people, including immigrants, are valued contributors and vital to the success of our communities and shared future.
• More people than ever are on the move, displaced by climate and conflict and seeking opportunity and mobility. As this migration reshapes communities, many places are unprepared and underinvested in the work needed to create welcoming infrastructure – and they’re unsure of where to start. Welcoming Week invites communities to take the first step toward creating an environment where everyone can truly thrive. In many ways, the initiative is an opportunity for communities to cultivate the awareness and energy that’s needed to sustain year-long welcoming efforts.

Customizable Messages

• We believe that being welcoming is much more than being friendly, tolerant, or peaceful. To be truly welcoming, a community needs intentional, inclusive policies, practices, and norms that enable all residents to live, thrive, and contribute fully. Welcoming Week is one of the tools that can help us achieve this vision. During Welcoming Week, we pursue equity in our community by (specific detail(s) about your Welcoming Week event(s)).
• Welcoming Week poses an opportunity for communities to cultivate the awareness and energy that’s needed to sustain year-long welcoming efforts. In (Location), this looks like (specific detail(s) about your Welcoming Week event(s)).
• Belonging and welcome are at the heart of Welcoming Week because we all thrive when We’re All In. (Provide context about your event. How does it help build a community that’s “All In” on valuing diverse perspectives, backgrounds, experiences, and cultures?)
• This year, we’re showcasing (Location)’s collective approach to creating welcoming places for all by (provide background on your event(s)).

What Welcoming Week Looks Like In Practice

General Messages

• Welcoming Week looks different in every participating community. For some, Welcoming Week provides an annual opportunity to host a local voter registration drive. For others, Welcoming Week includes launching a community-wide book club geared toward discussions about social justice, equity, and inclusion.  No matter the topic or type of event, Welcoming Week activities strengthen a community’s broader welcoming efforts by building bridges among the people and organizations advancing a more just society.
• Welcoming Week has also served as a key inflection point for local governments to issue proclamations that emphasize the importance of building inclusive, equitable, and welcoming communities for all.

Customizable Messages

• Welcoming Week looks different in every participating community. In (Location), We’re All In on our (list 2-3 values) values by (specific detail(s) about your Welcoming Week event(s)).

Who Welcoming Week Aims to Engage

• Belonging and welcome are at the heart of Welcoming Week because we all thrive when We’re All In. Welcoming Week aims to engage neighbors with diverse perspectives, backgrounds, experiences, and cultures in discussions and actions that advance more welcoming places.

The History of Welcoming Week

• In 2012, Welcoming America launched Welcoming Week with the belief that our communities are strongest when everyone who lives in them feels welcome. Back then, Welcoming Week engaged 20 communities in the United States. Today, more than 600 events take place in-person and virtually across the globe for Welcoming Week.

Why Welcoming Week Matters

General Messages

• Cultivating a welcoming spirit in any community requires ongoing, consistent work. Welcoming Week creates space to reflect upon these year-round efforts, celebrate progress, and set new goals for inclusion and belonging in the community.
• Welcoming Week is not only a celebration but an opportunity to go deeper in our conversations about equity and inclusion for all communities. We can’t talk about immigration without also acknowledging the roles of race, gender, religion, culture, and other identity factors. Welcoming Week poses an opportunity to identify and discuss those intersections.
• Welcoming Week poses an essential storytelling opportunity. It assists communities nationwide in crafting values-based messaging that showcases how they are building welcoming communities.
• Welcoming Week is an opportune moment to unite as individuals and groups, celebrate our strengths and differences, and recognize that we’re at our best when We’re All In on building more welcoming places, together.
• Celebrated alongside Constitution Day, Welcoming Week highlights the cultural, social, and economic contributions of immigrants – today, and throughout history – that are essential to the foundation of our society. (This is a United States-specific talking point.)

Customizable Messages

• Welcoming Week is one crucial part of our greater inclusion and belonging initiatives. At our Welcoming Week events, community members come together as individuals and groups, celebrate our strengths and differences, and showcase our collective approach to creating welcoming places for all. These special initiatives help us advance important community goals, including (details about your community’s specific welcoming goal(s)).

What is Welcoming Week?   
Celebrated in communities around the globe, Welcoming Week is an annual campaign that connects neighbors of all backgrounds through community-informed activities and events. Every Fall, local communities will gather to celebrate their diversity, advance inclusion, and come together around shared causes and interests.

Why is Welcoming Week only one week long?   
Establishing a welcoming culture in any community requires ongoing, consistent work to foster equity and inclusion. Welcoming Week acts as a recurring point in the year for communities to reflect on how far they’ve come, celebrate their progress, and map their priorities for the coming year. Welcoming Week can also act as a launch pad for communities that are taking their first steps toward building truly welcoming places, and those actions can go well beyond one week!

Who Can Host Welcoming Week Activities? 
Anyone - including individuals, nonprofits, businesses, and governments - can host Welcoming Week events in their community. Welcoming America makes its Welcoming Week resources accessible to the public, and they can be found here.

While an organization doesn’t need to be directly affiliated with Welcoming America to participate in Welcoming Week, many Welcoming Week events are hosted by the member organizations and governments in Welcoming America’s Network. Composed of nonprofits and local governments, members of the Welcoming Network are working to build more inclusive and welcoming communities in the places they call home. The Welcoming Network extends to around nearly 300 governments and nonprofits - including libraries, schools, universities, and more - in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Germany, and the United Kingdom. No organization is too small nor too large to participate in Welcoming Week events.

What other work does Welcoming America do?   
Welcoming America is committed to supporting communities in building a welcoming society where every person, including immigrants, can fully contribute and shape our shared prosperity. Year-round, Welcoming America advances several initiatives that:

• Connect community, government, and nonprofit leaders,
• Build on the work happening in local communities by providing tested methods and approaches for inclusive and welcoming places,
• And help communities create policies, reinforce welcoming principles, and communicate the benefits of inclusion.

You can learn more about Welcoming America on their website.

How can I get involved in Welcoming Week?  
Each year, more than 600 events take place in-person and virtually across the globe for Welcoming Week. You can use our Welcoming Week event map to get involved in your local community. Interested in launching your own Welcoming Week campaign? Check out our toolkit to get started.

How can I start conversations with people in my community who are hesitant or opposed to supporting Welcoming Week?  
It can be challenging to start conversations about our changing communities, immigration, and racial bias – especially with those who remain unsure about immigration and the impact of migration on their communities. Welcoming America designed this toolkit with these conversations in mind. In it, you’ll find messaging tools to help you begin those challenging discussions and navigate them from start to finish.

You can find additional messaging support on Welcoming America’s resources page, linked here.

Check out our April 2024 webinar recordings to learn about resources to help make your Welcoming Week events a success. Watch to learn about our 2024 theme, “We’re All In," best practices from event hosts who have held successful events, and how to add your event to the map.

Webinar 1 (with event examples from Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. and Red Deer, Alberta, Canada)

• English
• French
• German
• Italian
• Spanish

Webinar 2 (with event examples from Northwest Arkansas, U.S. and Gladstone, Victoria, Australia)

• English