We were so excited to share our vision with y’all last week for this next chapter in Canopy’s story: To see refugees and our community thrive together. That’s what’s next for us on our ambitious mission. We don’t want to merely get our refugee families on their feet here —we want them to thrive here, and we want to see our whole community thrive with them.
In order to do that, we are going to have to grow—a lot. Currently, our services are almost entirely limited to our families’ first 90-180 days in the country. That’s it. But our vision is for refugees to thrive here and we know we can’t expect to see that happen if we’re only serving them for 90-180 days.
That’s why, over the next 3-5 years, we are committing to rolling out a series of programs and services that will ensure our refugee families have the assistance they need for up to 5 full years after arrival.
After months of listening to our refugee clients, partners and volunteers, it’s clear we have a lot of work ahead of us in order to make this vision a reality. And it’s going to take all of us. If we are going to grow our programming so significantly, we are going to need to grow our support. We are going to need more volunteers, more co-sponsors, more partners and more donors.
That’s where you come in. We’d like to invite you to be a part of this next stage of growth by joining our new Community of Welcome.
Community of Welcome members will give:
- A recurring monthly gift of $25 or more— up to whatever they can afford
Community of Welcome members will get:
- A new t-shirt annually
- First dibs on event tickets including our Refugee Benefit Dinner that has sold out every year!
- Tickets to exclusive events like our Canopy Family Picnic and Holiday Party.
- A sneak peek at our email updates so you can be the first to know what we’re up to!
Want in? Well then, mark your calendars! We will be officially launching this program on April 4th in conjunction with NWA Gives Day.
We currently have 39 incredible donors who are already giving monthly gifts of $25 a month or more. If you’re one of them, THANK YOU for your support and welcome to the Community of Welcome! You’ll be automatically enrolled in the program on April 4th and will become immediately eligible for all the perks that come with it.
If you aren’t yet supporting us monthly, this is your time to start! We are looking for 140 of our neighbors to join our Community of Welcome this spring so that we can get started implementing our new vision and Long Welcome plan right away– and we are going to get started with a bang on NWA Gives Day!
It’s going to be fun. We’ll have lots of exciting giveaways throughout the day—everything from Arsaga’s coffee to Samuel Gray Art prints to a signed copy of Alan Gratz’ book Refugee. We’ll be live on Facebook and Instagram throughout the day to keep you all posted on our progress toward our goal. You’ll get to hear from our staff, our director, our board members and maybe even some of our clients. So be sure to tune in—and jump in—April 4th!
We’ll see you then!
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