Welcoming Week / Welcoming Salt Lake 2020
Welcoming Salt Lake is an annual celebration bringing together people and local events that celebrate the contributions of immigrants and refugees and highlights the role communities play in ensuring everyone feels welcome.
This event, known nationally as Welcoming Week, will take place September 12–20, 2020. This year’s theme is Creating Home Together. In the past, this event has brought people together in person to enjoy food, culture, art and more. This year the event will be held virtually.
Part of the nation-wide movement, Welcoming Salt Lake raises awareness of the economic and cultural contributions immigrants bring to the Salt Lake community.
Links for Welcoming Week Events
Sept. 12-20 – Host or attend a Virtual Civic Dinner during Welcoming Week - Welcoming America is proud to partner with Civic Dinners and Weaving Community to launch a conversation exploring the state of belonging in the United States. Find out more. National.
Sept. 12-20 – New American Artists: Poetry, Visual Art, Dance, and Sculpture. Follow along on the UH Book Festival Facebook page and the UH Book Festival Instagram page. Salt Lake City, UT
Sept. 12-20 – Emerald Hills Institute Virtual Photo Exhibit: What I Brought in My Luggage. People’s lives in Turkey changed dramatically after the failed coup attempt on July 15th, 2016. The objects displayed in this exhibition are the relics of these lost lives, representing the yearning for a homeland that is abruptly and arbitrarily denied to them simply because of their association with a social group. Salt Lake City, UT
Sept. 12-20 – Community Stories Interviews: Finding Home in the Salt Lake Valley. Learn the stories of two different refugee families and how they are finding home in the Salt Lake valley. Salt Lake City, UT
Sept. 12 - Oct. 16 – The Infiltrators Screening. A documentary film telling the story of how undocumented teenage immigrants intentionally let themselves be caught and put into one of America's for-profit detention centers, with a bold plan to get other detainees (and themselves) out. Follow the link and use the Promo Code: LHC2020. Salt Lake City, UT
Sept. 12-20 – Voices of Refugee Youth: Speeches from the Utah Refugee Education & Training Center. Learn about different experiences refugee youth have had as they came to the United States and adjusted to their new life by listening to their stories that were prepared in conjunction with an 8 week public speaking class through the Utah Department of Workforce Services/Division of Refugee Services. Salt Lake City, UT
Sept. 14-18, daily at 10:30 am – Storytime for Toddlers. Join us for Storytime featuring great stories to help children learn about welcoming and including all people. Salt Lake City, UT
Sept. 15-20 – Tales & Tunes. Enjoy multicultural stories and music by Annie and Dan Eastmond (Harvest Home), that express the value of welcoming all and working together to create home. Salt Lake City, UT
Sept. 12, Sat. 1pm MST / 3pm EST – Creating Home Together: A Welcoming Week Experience, Atlanta, GA
Sept. 15 – Hostile Terrain. Participatory art project via Zoom. The exhibition is composed of ~3,200 handwritten toe tags that represent migrants who have died trying to cross the Sonoran Desert of Arizona between the mid-1990s and 2019. Salt Lake City, UT
Sept. 15, Tue. Noon-1:30 MST / 2-3:30pm EST – Refuge or Refusal: A Conversation about Turning Points in U.S. Immigration History, Kennesaw State Univ., GA
Sept. 16 – CCX Anniversary of the Mexican Independence. The Consul of Mexico in Salt Lake City, Jose V. Borjon, has the honor to invite you to the commemoration of the 210th Anniversary of the Independence of Mexico. Salt Lake City, UT
Sept. 16, Wed. 1pm MST / 3pm EST – Building Relational Infrastructure: An Interactive Conversational Experience, San Francisco, CA
Sept. Sept. 16-20 – Tea Demonstration with Mika from the Honey TeaHive. Mika Lee from Honey TeaHive shares how tea has played a role in her home. She discusses briefly about the history of tea, types of tea, and how to brew the perfect cup in your own home. The demonstration will be posted to the Salt Lake County Library Facebook page on September 16 at 7:30 am and will be available on that page thereafter. Salt Lake City, UT
Sept. 17, Thu. 7pm – Utah Humanities: Youth Artists Roundtable, Salt Lake City, UT
Sept. 18, Fri. 6-8pm – Spice Kitchen: Cooking Class with Ashikat Kitchen, Salt Lake City, UT
Sept. 18, Fri. 5-6:30pm MST / 7-8:30pm EST – Welcoming Week Virtual Dance Party, Atlanta, GA
For additional events not listed above please Search the Welcoming America Events Listing.
About National Welcoming Week
Welcoming America is proud to lead the growing network of hosts and partners around the United States and world who strive to make their communities a more welcoming place for all.
Through Welcoming Week, organizations and communities bring together immigrants, refugees, and long-time residents to build strong connections and affirm the importance of welcoming and inclusive places in achieving collective prosperity.
At a time when political rhetoric has deepened divisions and the COVID-19 pandemic has renewed anti-immigrant sentiment, Welcoming Week reminds us to double down on our inclusive vision and find new ways to bring together people across lines of difference to develop greater understanding and mutual support.
Across the globe, welcomers are leading the way. In 2019, there were over 2,500 Welcoming Week events in 250 communities, with more than 80,000 people participating and over 10 million social media impressions.
2020 Census: At Welcoming America, our core belief is that the strongest communities are ones that actively encourage the participation and inclusion of all residents, especially those that are deemed “hard-to-reach”. We cannot truly be welcoming until we ensure that every single person is counted, no matter how long it takes. To help ensure the census is fair and accurate for all, and that everyone who wants to is able to vote in the 2020 election, we have compiled a list of resources, action steps, and examples from our Welcoming Network members and partners to help you promote census participation and voting in your community.
What the Welcoming Network is Doing
Here is but one example of some of the socially-distant actions our Welcoming Network members have taken to raise awareness and promote participation of the census in their communities: Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson wrote an op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune explaining why the census is so vital and urging residents to respond by the September 30 deadline. See what others have done.
Celebrate Welcoming Week and show the world how your community welcomes everyone, from every background and demographic. Together, we can make our communities a place where diverse people from around the world feel valued and included. Together, we can build a nation of neighbors.
Welcoming Week 2020: Host Toolkit
Events are the heart and soul of Welcoming Week. They build stronger communities by bringing together new and long-time residents, and encourage dialogue and build connections between people who are seemingly different.
By hosting a Welcoming Week event, you are part of a growing movement of communities across the world who recognize that building welcoming communities makes us stronger.
This year, we recognize that Welcoming Week will be different due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Depending on where you live, there will be uneven guidance for hosting in-person events, as well as the limitations for building connections through virtual events. Our toolkit provides resources that can be applied to both in-person and virtual. View the Welcoming Week 2020: Host Toolkit.
Creating Home Together
This year, Welcoming Week will take place under the theme of “Creating Home Together.” This is what it means:
Home is not just a house.
Home is any place where you feel safe and accepted: in your neighborhood, in your community, at work.
Ultimately, home is where you feel you most belong.
In this pandemic, we may be redefining where home is, what makes us feel at home, or how to make home a more inclusive and equal place for all.
This Welcoming Week, let’s build home in new ways through virtual spaces, digital sharing, and being together even when we’re alone.
Let’s create home together so everyone feels they belong, no matter where you are, or where you are from, so that each of us has a stake in its future.
