The 8th Annual Refugee and Immigrant Volunteer Summit: Welcome in Action
This year has already proved to be particularly unsettling and uncertain for newcomers and the people in the community with them. Given this climate, the 8th Annual Refugee and Immigrant Volunteer Summit (RAIVS) with its theme “Welcome in Action”, was incredibly timely. At this two-day summit, over 175 volunteers, service providers, faith communities, experts, government officials, concerned community members, and newcomers came together to learn, network, and build community. The event was made possible through the combined organizational strengths of Capaz-IT, the City of Richmond’s Office of Immigrant and Refugee Engagement, Henrico County’s Office of Outreach and Engagement, the International Ministries of Ashland, the International Rescue Committee, ReEstablish Richmond, the Sacred Heart Center, and the University of Richmond’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies. Together participants shared approaches to welcome and envisioned what the future of welcome could look like.
The summit began on Friday, February 20th at the University of Richmond’s Jepson Alumni Center. Mayor Danny Avula opened the day, inspiring attendees with his personal story as Richmond’s first immigrant mayor. He acknowledged the circumstances of today and left attendees with hope for the future:
“Things feel bleak right now. We are in so many ways actively closing the doors to new Americans...but I am inspired and reassured by the fact that this is the DNA of our country. We were built on being a place of welcome, and you all know that better than anybody.... You are ensuring that this is a place of welcome and through those efforts you are building relationships... Thank you for sharing with each other what's working but also being open to hearing how we can do better, how we can be a more welcoming community.”
Elham Khairi, Senior Health Worker with the Henrico and Richmond Health Districts, followed the mayor as the facilitator of a Newcomer Panel. Three newcomers from Sudan, Afghanistan, and Bolivia shared their lived experience of being welcomed, feeling unwelcome, and finding hope in these difficult times. With renewed optimism and a new perspective, participants were ready to tackle a day of learning.
The rest of the day featured seven different workshops hosted and facilitated by organizations working alongside newcomers. The sessions included a wide variety of topics for both specialized and general audiences: federal policy impacts, faith-based approaches to welcome, teaching English to pre-literate learners, advocacy at Virginia’s General Assembly, and self-care for volunteers. Some highlights were a session led by ReEstablish Richmond staff on partnering with newcomers to avoid paternalism in volunteering and a panel on how to act in solidarity with newcomers featuring the Sacred Heart Center, Richmond Community Legal Fund, Legal Aid Justice Center, and Hanover Rapid Response Network. During lunch, Rev. Roscoe D. Cooper, Fairfield District Chair for the Henrico County Board of Supervisors gave remarks thanking attendees for their hard work and emphasized the importance of newcomers to the community. For everyone in attendance, it was a productive day filled with new insights and new connections. One participant remarked:
“I deeply enjoyed participating and learning from the speakers, as well as the participants that I spoke with. I jotted down so many ideas to implement and incorporate into my own work.”
The following day at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens, three dynamic keynote speakers shared Ted-talk style reflections on Welcome in Action and joined in a panel conversation facilitated by Jelisa Turner from the Henrico County Office of Outreach and Engagement.
The first speaker, Farah Salaam Hottle, is the founder of Origins Consulting Group, and a board member of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy and the Afghan Association of Central Virginia. She shared the story of a member of the Afghan community who is currently in immigrant detention to highlight the damaging impact of biased stories and how showing up for our impacted friends and neighbors can make a difference. Participants noted that her explanation on how frightening rhetoric can lead to binary thinking and discrimination was particularly illuminating in understanding how people develop their own perspectives.
The second speaker, Lyons Sanchezconcha, the new Executive Director of the Sacred Heart Center, shared his journey from immigrating to the U.S. from Peru as a kindergartner to leading a community hub for the Latino population providing essential support in Richmond. Lyons painted a clear picture of some of his first experiences of welcome as a newcomer:
“In kindergarten, feeling unwelcomed felt like crying at the bus stop, scared, wondering ‘What am I doing? Where am I going?’ Welcome in Action felt like my teachers who couldn’t speak to me giving me bookbags with school supplies. Feeling unwelcomed felt like in first grade, a student who said ‘We don’t want Lyons in our group because he doesn’t look like us.’ Welcome in Action looked like getting an award in first grade for helping a new student who was in the position that I was just in the year before.”
The final speaker was Dr. Mona Hafeez Siddiqui, a civil rights attorney who formerly served as an Assistant Attorney General for Virginia and a trial attorney within the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. She acknowledged the weight of speaking out for marginalized communities and the importance of community and belonging in providing support to those who speak out. In her final call to action, she said:
“It’s really important to protect our joy and humanity in this work. Oppressive systems thrive when we feel depleted, when we are divided. But, when we share meals together like what we’ll be doing today when we break bread and when we share our stories, we’re building and cultivating a resilient infrastructure to speak up strategically and make systemic impact”
The keynotes and the following panel were both inspiring and instructional for participants. The lunch that followed provided opportunities to discuss what was learned, explore new avenues for supporting newcomers, and collaborate with new partners towards a shared goal. After the day concluded, an attendee shared their thoughts:
“It was very restorative to hear about all the great work being done and to meet so many people interested in helping.”
RAIVS 2026 provided knowledge and community to the people invested in the newcomer community during an uncertain period in our nation’s history. The sessions and keynotes brought together experts and community leaders to create a full picture of what “Welcome in Action” looks like.
