Creating a place of joy for newcomers and Welcomers

A Q&A with Soft Landing Missoula

Soft Landing Missoula evolved from one community’s passion and determination to alleviate suffering and provide a sense of home for millions of displaced refugees. A small grassroots effort between friends grew into a community-wide commitment to welcome and support newcomers beyond the initial resettlement process. Welcome.US spoke with Mary Poole, executive director of Soft Landing Missoula, a Welcome.US partner and Welcome Fund grantee, about their efforts over the last decade to create a home where newcomers can thrive.

Ten years ago, your community in Missoula recognized a need for change. As civil war displaced millions of Syrians, a group of Missoulians persevered to reestablish refugee resettlement in Montana. What does that say about your community and the foundation of Soft Landing Missoula?

Missoula is an incredibly special place. We live in a place with a very involved community, and that was something that I didn't know about before I started this. It was immediate. It seemed that the whole community was thinking about how we could help refugees, but nobody knew how.

Before we even knew what resettlement was, before we even knew what our heart might be in all of this, there were hundreds of Missoulians who had reached out wanting to help in some way. That was incredibly motivating and nerve wracking—all of a sudden, we have this responsibility. We asked our town, is this something we could do? Missoula had been a part of resettlement before. We have many amazing Hmong, Belarusian, and Ukrainian families here from previous iterations of resettlement, so we have an institutional knowledge. We have knowledge, too, about what it means to welcome those families. So it was a very easy jump for Missoulians to say, well, absolutely, we should do this again.

It was an interesting time because nationally and throughout the world, the conversation was really shifting around more of an unwelcoming conversation. Our community was doing the exact opposite. Everyone we reached out to wanted to know how we could do this and more… Everybody was involved in saying, yes, this is something we think would be really great for Missoula to help families across the world, and great for our community.

And that's continued today. Now we serve over 700 refugees and immigrants from over 30 different countries. We've grown from Molly and I volunteering the whole first year to make it happen, to 12 full-time staff that are doing the work of welcome here and in an incredible community ecosystem. Everybody has stepped up to the plate here.

Soft Landing Missoula supports refugee and immigrant families with what you call the “long welcome.” What does a long welcome mean for the families you support?

That was something that became really clear in the beginning, and something that we learned from the families that we were working with. While the work of a resettlement agency is essential, and the IRC here does a spectacular job, they still have a contract that is [restrained]. As we started to get to know people, one of our biggest lessons was that you enter this work in this really heavy space, and there are heavy things to do like find safety for people, find housing and jobs. Then you learn that, my gosh, joy exists right alongside that. That's something that I wasn't necessarily expecting—how important the piece that is joy is, and the piece that is community, and the piece that goes beyond meeting someone's basic needs.

The long welcome idea was born out of that. We don't have a service period. We don't have appointments. Our space reflects a very living room-like feel. That has helped people feel at home here. The long welcome means a lot more than treating an individual, but involving an entire community to build a life. A lot of the work we do, we connect refugees and immigrants directly with volunteers in our community and other people in other families. Those relationships—while they might meet to study English once a week—almost inevitably evolve into cooking together, their kids playing together, helping each other, getting into different after-school activities—it just evolves into a really true relationship.

Part of the long welcome is when someone feels like they are part of the community that they live in and not just here as a visitor anymore.

You’ve established a youth program, understanding that refugee children need extra support to manage the stress and trauma they have experienced at a young age. What activities and programs have been most beneficial to children?

Molly and I who started this, we're both moms. One of the things that was really important to us, we want the kids to be able to have the same experience as our kids, which is really challenging, incredibly challenging for a new family trying to make it here. We knew that parents were making a real sacrifice to be here. They were going to have to start over with employment, and have language barriers and all those things. People have amazing families and amazing parents who are doing a lot, but being able to be that extra hand to see that kids get a really great experience here, that they have an experience that is similar to their peers, that's really important... Those shared experiences are incredibly important in building friendships and a sense of belonging.

Our program really started out as academic support, because the public schools had reached out wondering if we'd be able to provide some academic support. We started a twice a week after-school tutoring where we helped kids with homework.

We're not only doing academic stuff, but we have both a middle school and a high school girls group that works on empowerment and leadership with community partners. It's a really safe space to giggle and to talk about the absurdities of teenage hood and find that shared experience with each other. Those are gals coming from all over the world, so there's an Iraqi gal and a Congolese gal who are just best friends right now. It's so fun to see those intercultural relationships build.

We go whitewater rafting, rock climbing, skiing, and we help kids access our local soccer programs. A lot of times, athletic programs are inaccessible to refugee kiddos simply due to transportation. Working with volunteers, working with our community mentors, and working with the organizations that are hosting those athletic activities is really important.

Through the United We Eat program, you recognize that food is a powerful expression of love and culture. Can you share more about that program, and how it offers comfort and community in Missoula?

That came about in the very beginning. Molly and I were spending a lot of time with this very generous community [who were donating things like TVs and bikes]. You couldn't show up at someone's house with something for them without being grabbed and pulled down at a table and given this amazing food. People have these deep, deep traditions of generosity, of welcoming, of hospitality, and being able to share a meal with someone is a form of service for them.

We could tell how amazing it felt for people to have a way to give back to us in a time where we were helping them out. There is this whole sense of agency and dignity in being able to serve others and provide a meal to those that were helping them. On top of that, the food was amazing and delicious, and we are a little bit of an international food desert here in Missoula.

It was this idea of starting up a program in which Missoulians got to experience this generosity and hospitality from refugees and immigrants in our community through food. It's a way to reach out to our community and say, come share this meal with us, come learn more about refugees and immigrants. But it was also a way for us to be able to provide some supplementary income to families that could use a little bit of that.

We do a weekly takeout meal, which happened to be great during COVID. I think we have close to 30 chefs that we work with. It's a new menu every week. They go live on Thursday mornings at 9 a.m. and often sell out within a half an hour.

Every month, we do what we call supper clubs. That's a more formal course to sit-down dinner.

How can Welcomers support your work at Soft Landing Missoula?

When I look at Missoula, and I look at Montana, there are incredibly diverse opinions and people and political stances involved in our efforts here in Montana… There are so many people coming to this work of welcome from incredibly diverse places. And there is a place for you here. Don't shy away from a feeling you have in your heart. Don't shy away from an experience. We are here with open doors and open arms. And that includes you.

Even in the hardest times we were just building this in a really challenging atmosphere, knowing that we're not alone in this. Our experience isn't dealing with angry people all day. Our experience is dealing with excited, loving, energetic, compassionate, joyful, motivated people all day. Whether that's partners or community members or people across the state or the nation.

Many of us out here in this space are local nonprofits that definitely rely on the generosity of our communities. Broadly speaking, our work also relies really heavily on volunteers, people who show up for us a lot. And every community is so unique and different. You have someone that's an expert in this somewhere near you. I would just encourage people to find those groups, give of their time, give financially if that's an option for people, and be a part of that.