Stories We Share: Simi Kasakwe-Welsch Reflects on Welcoming Week 2025

Looking back on Welcoming Week 2025, numbers can help paint a picture.

Communities held events in every county in West Central Initiative’s region. Hundreds gathered on farms, at street fairs, in libraries, community spaces, and schools. Events revolved around food sampling, exhibitions, art, meals, and demonstrations. Collaborators ranged from towns, schools, nonprofits, and private businesses.

All in all, those nine September days offered people a chance to connect, learn, play, and embrace new residents.

Yet beyond the numbers, how did participants feel?

We posed that question to Similoluwa (Simi) Kasakwe-Welsch, a Welcoming Week rock star who experienced three separate events this year. She attended gatherings in Alexandria, Glenwood, and Starbuck. In Glenwood, she was even part of The Welcome Table program, sharing stories about her native country of Nigeria while attendees sampled Nigerian food. “Even though I haven’t been back since I was five years old, I hold my home country dearly to my heart,” she noted.

“Culturally, we never really lost any sense of being Nigerian,” she continues. “My children are born and raised in the United States, but are very familiar with Nigerian food, culture, music, and all of that.” Other presenters at The Welcome Table, hosted by Glenwood Lakes Area Welcome Center, shared foods from Chile, India, Germany, and Norway.

When Starbuck Chamber of Commerce hosted its very first Welcoming Week event this year, Simi was there with her family. “My kids and I were able to go to the Starbuck Depot, where they have the Lefsa Festival every year. If you’ve never been there, you should definitely check that out.”

In Starbuck, Simi’s family “visited” different countries, learned a little bit about them, and then received beads that represented the flag of the various countries. “At the end of the tour around the depot and train, you were able to make a bracelet that had all the different nations, like flags, represented on the beads. Very, very cool,” she said. “My kids absolutely enjoyed doing that and getting to go home with their beads and their bracelets.”

At Alexandria Technical and Community College’s Global Beats & Bites, Simi enjoyed engaging neighbors over tasty snacks and diverse entertainment. While she wasn’t involved in planning this year, she had been in the past and loved the concept. “I thought great idea and a concept. And I was, like, I’m going to be part of that.”

A Welcoming Perspective

Simi offers some thoughts on welcoming communities. “I still feel like an immigrant, even though I’ve been here for more than 20 years,” she reflects. “There’s always something about that uneasiness when you go into a new environment or a new community, about, you know, introducing yourself for the first time and getting the inevitable, oh, your name is different. Where do you come from?”

She continues, “I’m not ignorant to the fact that I have been incredibly fortunate in the places that I have lived, including Pope County, of experiencing an overwhelming amount of welcoming and a lot of just genuine curiosity,” she said. “People seem to want to be educated. They say, ‘I’ve never met anybody from Nigeria. What is different about it? What’s the weather like?’”

“So when people have that genuine curiosity about somewhere they’ve never learned about before, that’s what really makes me feel welcome.”

Simi also knows we all need to welcome those of all ages. “My oldest kid is very much in the stage of knowing that she’s different and feeling those differences,” she said. “But we live in an area where even if it is an initial shock, it kind of wears off very quickly. Like, so you guys are not from here. Okay. And moving on. Again, that genuine curiosity is what really makes us feel, makes me, anyway, feel very welcome.”

So with that experience, do you have any ideas for future Welcoming Week events?

“I was thinking about the different events, and I think a combination, honestly, of the Glenwood event and the Alexandria event, would be the golden ticket,” she said. “Have a little of that free roaming and getting to look at things, but also have that presentation style of really learning in-depth about somebody’s experience, and what they’ve liked and what they’ve disliked in their experiences. I think a combination of the two of them would make a great event.”

Simi agrees that we need welcoming communities year-round. “I think just constantly having those reminders, whether it’s video, images, or even quotations from the week that continue to spiral throughout the year, is a great way to keep it in the forefront of people’s imagination. We’re not just spending one week welcoming people and then we walk by them on the street for the rest of the year.

“Keep it going in the forefront of people’s minds so that it’s not just a one-week thing, it’s a year-round form of welcoming.”

Turning Welcoming Week into a Welcoming Year? That is certainly an attainable goal.