Dear Friends,
The word spreading and our group is growing! We are excited to so many from the Twin Cities community offer to host our newcomer families. This past Sunday our group member Kelly and her family hosted Arshed, Hiba, and their adorable twin boys! Thank you Kelly!
We continue to be committed to our original goal of connecting one local family and one newcomer family for dinner. We strongly believe this is the best space to build meaningful and lasting relationships. With this in mind we will continue to collaborate with our local partner to identify and match newcomer families and families from our group. We are now planning our next 2 dinners for the final weekend in March.
A few other updates:
1. I have received a few comments about the amount of email messages members have been receiving from the Change X site. To turn off email notifications please use this link - https://www.changex.org/us/account/notifications
2. I have also created a Facebook page where we can share resources and other information about welcoming newcomers to our community. We will also make announcements on upcoming dinner hosting opportunities and share pictures. Please follow or like our page: https://www.facebook.com/dinnertogetherminneapolis/
Thank you for being part of this initiative, and we look forward to staying connected with each of you!
Best,
Marina
This is such a wonderful idea. I am Syrian so this truly holds a special place in my heart.
I'd love to co-host a dinner either at a house, community center, or cafe/restaurant. I live in Robbinsdale but am open to anywhere in the Twin Cities. Thank you for organizing this and I'm looking forward to hopefully being a part of it!
Melissa, I will message you on FB! Marina, I am actually interested in a more intimate, smaller gathering, versus a larger group. I thought we were able to partner up and co-host with someone via this group, and still be matched with one newcomer/family. Please correct me if I'm wrong! Either way, your approach is the one I'd like to proceed with. Thank you so much!
Hi Melissa and Donna, I responded to Melissa's message. How wonderful that you both want to connect and host a larger group event to do a welcome dinner. At this time I am helping families connect one on one. This is the commitment we had to our local partner, to match a family in our group with one newcomer family. We truly believe this is the best approach to build meaningful and lasting relationships. If you do want to co-host a larger event at a community center I suggest reaching out to local churches. Several help support refugees and host welcome dinners. Another idea is to reach out to some of the local schools in your neighborhood that may have newcomer families. This is a great idea. Good luck and please let me know if I can help in any other way.
I can't figure out how to message on ChangeX. I was able to message Marina but that is all. So Donna, we will have to connect through FB I believe. Thank you. Melissa
We would love to host! We live near Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis. How do we stay updated on when you will be looking for more hosts? Looks like you're all set for the next few months. Thank you for organizing! This is such a wonderful thing. I hope we can be a part of it.
Hi Emily, thank you and welcome to the group. We are so excited to have you join this initiative. We are set for April and May, but will be reaching out for host for June-July in the nest few weeks. I will certainly keep you updated.
Thank you Kelly!
I just have to confirm what Marinas goal is in one family with one family. It truly does give that safe space for both families to open up and share and build authentic meaningful relationship.. I 'm very glad for this opportunity and believe that Arshed and Hiba and boys will be good friends , Thank you Marina for your vision, work and leadership in this!!