About

Welcoming New Hampshire is a coalition of organizations and community leaders from across the state coming together to make New Hampshire more welcoming for everyone, with a particular focus on welcoming immigrants and refugees. We come together to learn from one another and to collectively raise up and address community concerns.

Welcoming New Hampshire was launched in 2012 as an initiative of the New Hampshire Alliance of Immigrants and Refugees (NHAIR), the NH branch of the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition (MIRA Coalition). Welcoming NH works to bring together foreign born and native born residents to achieve a positive integration and inclusion of immigrants and refugees into the social fabric of their receiving communities. Through education and cultural activities that both engage non-immigrant audiences and create space for immigrants to make their voices heard, Welcoming New Hampshire strives to build an understanding of the impact and contributions of immigrants that will lead to stronger and more inclusive communities and fight back against the anti-immigrant sentiment that has divided so many.

Over the past few years Welcoming NH has successfully built bridges of trust between foreign and native born, engaged diverse stakeholders across sectors, and promoted the contributions of New Hampshire’s immigrant and refugee communities. Concord, Manchester and Nashua have signed Welcoming resolutions, with Laconia not far behind. In collaboration with active Welcoming committees and many partner organizations in those cities, we have hosted presentations and community conversations across the state; launched an integrated media campaign in print, broadcast and social media; and organized a cross-sector statewide Welcoming Conference on September 16, 2016 in Manchester, with the theme of “Building New Hampshire’s Economic Future.”

In the coming years, we will build on the foundation of Welcoming work to advance bipartisan support for immigrant integration within New Hampshire, at both the local and state level, and promote an atmosphere of equity, inclusion, and empowerment, through (1) activities that advance immigrant civic engagement; (2) building immigrant community leadership, especially among youth; and (3) programs to fight anti-immigrant bias among receiving communities. Celebrating and supporting immigrant and refugee participation in the civic and social fabric of U.S. life will help hold up a model of immigrant investment in our society, and encourage immigrants to have both a shared voice and shared responsibility in their communities—as citizens, voters, and active participants in civic institutions, from public meetings to local boards to chambers of commerce to government offices.

Welcoming New Hampshire is proud to be supported by the Endowment for Health and New Hampshire Charitable Foundation.