We have different ways to mark the passage of time. For many of us, it is the simple turning of a calendar page and watching what people in New York do at midnight in Times Square. On another level, it means that the earth has now completed another year’s journey around the sun, coming full circle. It is a time to reflect on what happened during the last year’s journey and what hopes we carry as we begin again.
When we as the Faribault Diversity Coalition look back, we have much to be thankful for…
o We saw people becoming neighbors. Longtime residents stepped forward as volunteers to teach English to those who are new. Those same students warmed them with their greetings of “Hello,Teacher!” when they saw them on the streets. Others shared a garden plot, exchanging smiles and greetings amid the produce.
o We saw people caring. More people dug into their closets and their pockets to help provide warm clothes to those in need. Preschool children walked in the cold with rosy cheeks to deliver gifts of food to the Welcome Center. Teens raised funds to buy and wrap Christmas gifts for children who may not otherwise get any…People who themselves needed food stayed to help unload trucks and distribute food to others. Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, Donahue’s Greenhouse, and Farmer Seed again made land and plants available to a community garden.
o We saw people wanting to build bridges between cultures. Hospice, dentists, county attorneys, Habitat for Humanity, downtown store owners, schools, youth programs, parent support groups, and immigrant parents all made efforts during the year to “do more” to understand or engage one another so that services or concerns could be made clear. The openness did much to build community.
o We saw people growing. Immigrant students who started ESL classes with only a few words learned to hold a conversation. Adult learners invested themselves in classes of carpentry, welding, and nursing and gained new skills to better their lives. People continued to learn more about how things work and how to “fish” in this lake.
We want to thank the many people of Faribault who have this year shared their generosity, their compassion, their warmth, their culture, their friendship, and their dreams with the community and with us here at the Welcome Center. We thank the City, United Way, the Initiative Foundation, Foldcraft, the Senior Center, the Jennie-O Turkey Store, Divine Mercy Church, individual donors, and especially BlueCross/BlueShield Foundation of MN. for the generous support that paved the way for what we could do. We feel blessed to have encountered so many from the Latino, Somali, and Sudanese communities who have shared with us their lives. We feel blessed to have met so many of those “already here” for a long time who have so generously reached out.
The task of becoming a community is never really finished. Though the earth has finished this year’s journey, it begins another. Let’s all make it our new year’s resolution to make the planet a friendly, welcoming place this next time around, beginning right here at home in Faribault.
Bob Kell
Director of the Welcome Center
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment