Organized Community-Building Activities: The Welcome Project

The Welcome Project is located in the Mystic Community Center in housing developments at 530 Mystic Ave (where both my AHORA students live). I learned about the activities sponsored by the Welcome Project through formal interviews with Latinos who live in the development, through informal conversations with my AHORA students and their families, and through both a formal interview and personal communication with the program coordinator, Nelson Salazar.

The common space of the Mystic Community Center is a meeting ground where interethnic interactions can occur. In addition to Welcome Project celebrations (like the Chinese New Year/Valentine's Day party in February), the organization hosts several activities to help improve the lives of the development's residents. Many of my narrators cited the community work that Salazar and The Welcome Project do, and as one of my El Salvadoran narrators exclaimed (in Spanish), “whenever the Welcome Project has free events, and I can attend, I go!”

Nelson Salazar, Transcribed (Interview #4), 10/17/03.

530 Mystic Ave Housing Development

Mural across from 530 Mystic Ave

In addition to a community garden project (dicussed in my report), The Welcome Project also organizes “women's groups” for women within the development. Salazar says they were started before he began working with The Welcome Project and were organized as support groups because there were a lot of single mothers who were struggling with little children. Unlike the interethnic programs of The Welcome Project, these groups are ethnicity specific (Latino, Vietnamese, Haitian) so that the women of the groups share a common language and can address their personal concerns. Maria Tejada also mentioned these groups, adding that women in the community help plan the meetings. Apparently these groups function as a forum for information sessions addressing community concerns (for example, when rent increased and people cold not understand their letters from the housing authority, or now there have been concerns about safety in the development and so a security meeting has been planned). Yet the women's groups also organize social events such as the Latina women's fieldtrip to go apple picking this last October. The Latina women's group thus functions to bring Latinas together both through efforts to educate and resolve immediate concerns, and also through collective events for the sake of having fun.

In addition to these groups for the women of the development, The Welcome Project also sponsors various tutoring programs. According to Maria Tejada, older people from the Catholic Church come to tutor children in the development and assist them with their homework (a program which Nelson Salazar organizes). Several of my narrators also mentioned English classes hosted by The Welcome Project, though none of them were currently participating.

In summary, The Welcome Project provides a common space at the Mystic Commuity Center (where people of different ethnic groups can interact and build community), and sponsors community garden patches, women's groups, tutoring programs, English classes, and one narrator even mentioned hearing about computer classes, crochet classes, and cooking classes. So, at least for the Latino residents of the Mystic Ave housing developments, in addition to Catholic Churches and Somerville soccer teams, The Welcome Project provides organized community-building opportunities.