Through Welcoming Week, organizations and communities bring together neighbors of all backgrounds to build strong connections and affirm the importance of welcoming and inclusive places in achieving collective prosperity.
WHAT IS WELCOMING WEEK?
Welcoming Week is an annual series of events where neighbors, immigrants and long-term residents come together in a spirit of unity. These gatherings demonstrate that in places large and small, people of all backgrounds can come together and create stronger communities by building meaningful connections and affirming the benefits of welcoming everyone.
By hosting a Welcoming Week event, you and your library will join communities across the globe that recognize that welcoming each and everyone of us makes our communities stronger economically, socially, and culturally.
Get ready! Plan a library Welcoming Week activity.
- Welcoming America ideas and resources: https://www.welcomingamerica.org/programs/welcoming-week
- American Library Association. Celebrating Welcoming Week: A Guide for Libraries, 2020.
Our Welcoming Week celebrations
The Mortenson Center, in collaboration with the New American Welcome Center, and Illinois International- Global Relations will have a Human Library Event as part of the events featured during 2025 National Welcoming week. The event will feature immigrants and international students living in Champaign-Urbana as human books. Each human “book” will be available during the event to interact with “readers” and talk to them about their native country. Topics covered in the conversations include among others geographic location, cuisine, languages spoken and culture. Snacks, arts & crafts will be offered as part of the event. Open to all ages!
- 2025 Sep 12-21
- 2024 > Meet Your Neighbors: A Human Library Event | 14 September 2024
- 2023 > Human Library Event- September 16, 2023 Internationalization @ Home!
- 2021 Sep 10-19 Theme “Belonging Begins With US”: Food Culture from Near and Far: Stories of Identity and Belonging (virtual panel discussion), September 16, 2021
- 2020 Sep 11-20: Global CU: Poetry of home and community identity (a virtual dialogue), September 17, 2020