Improving the lives of refugees and immigrants by matching them with dedicated neighbors to guide and support them in their new lives

2017 Highlight Reel

We graduated 25 “matches” — 25 refugee families and 25 Pittsburgh families — who were matched together for a 4-month mentorship program. In total, we had 193 people in the program, including 88 kids under the age of 18. The refugees originated from 7 countries — Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Congo, Rwanda, Myanmar and Bhutan. The mentors live in 23 different zip codes. This was truly a Pittsburgh community effort!

Over the course of 4 months, the mentors and mentees spent on average 350 hours a month together for a collective total of over 1,400 hours across 400 individual activities. Plus, here at Hello Neighbor, we produced 8 official Hello Neighbor activities including monthly potlucks in parks around the city and events held at, and in partnership with, The Andy Warhol Museum, The Frick Pittsburgh, Riverlife and The Gateway Clipper, The Pittsburgh Pirates, The Pittsburgh Riverhounds, and Heinz History Center (and more). We celebrated with a graduation on October, 6, 2017. Congratulations to the Class of 2017!

You Are Welcome

As we built this program, something we came back to over and over again is that the word refugee is a label. But refugees are much more than that. They are mothers and daughters and husbands and sons. They are students and soccer players. They are Pittsburghers. They are our neighbors. We started asking them to share how they would identify themselves and asked our mentors too. Their answers inspired us to create this video.

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Hello Neighbor.