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A City of Inclusion
City Leaders Work to Ensure Opportunities Reflect Manchester’s Diverse Community
by Liisa Rajala
Historically a destination for people from different backgrounds, Manchester and its network of services are evolving to meet the needs of its growing, culturally diverse community, and create equitable access to opportunity.
In a state where 90% of the population is white, it may surprise some to hear there are now more than 100 dialects spoken by students in the Manchester School District. The city has a thriving Congolese community and immigrants from other central African countries, as well as a vibrant Bhutanese community. During the pandemic, support organizations throughout greater Manchester have been in regular communication about how they can help immigrant and refugee families.
As the 2020-21 school year approached, the Center for New Americans — a joint effort of Southern New Hampshire University and the YWCA New Hampshire — sought to fill the linguistic gaps by informing students and their families about start dates, school-related paperwork and the manner in which students would be returning to learn amid the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as how to get tested for the virus. The Center worked with a few different translation organizations and the language line offered through Ascentria, one of the resettlement services offered in New Hampshire.
Education Committee connected families to the Manchester Community Action Coalition’s Virtual Tutoring Program, providing free tutors in a variety of languages to meet students’ needs.
“We’re also working on a project in partnership with the YWCA to help parents learn tech skills to help them be able to communicate effectively with the Manchester Public Schools staff via the Aspen portal and emails,” says Shalimar Encarnacion, head of the Manchester NAACP Education Committee.
SNHU’s college competency partner, Duet, has provided wraparound services such as laptops. The university has also addressed transportation issues and directed a few virtual teachers to assist organizations, as well as donating office supplies from its campus.
Pre-pandemic, the Center’s mission has been to provide education and wellness programs that in turn provided free child care, allowing parents to pursue their educational goals as well.
“Holistically, its (the Center is) meant to serve the educational journeys of refugee and immigrant families who find themselves speaking no English and having no formal credentials of education at any level and could walk out of the Center both proficient in English but also with an accredited associate or bachelor’s degree and hitting all the stops along the way,” says Steve Thiel, assistant vice president of social impact and community relations at SNHU.
Helping clients advance their academic careers and professional goals is the focus of Dan Soucy, job developer at the International Institute of New England, an organization that manages the resettlement of refugees.
“Sometimes we have clients who have been working in more of a manufacturing or assembly-type position, more of a manual labor position, and they’re interested in utilizing the skill sets from what they were doing in their home country or descending country,” says Soucy. “I’ve had some individuals in the past who were lawyers or working pharmacies before coming to the United States and started working at Walmart or Amazon. After a few years, they have the cultural wherewithal, they’re interested in returning to the work they’re truly passionate about. When there is an opportunity, it’s great to see our clients connect with those opportunities and reach a point where they have those skills where they can do that.”
Mayor Joyce Craig (Courtesy photo)
But providing educational opportunities and wellness programs have not been enough, which is why some organizations — including City Hall — are taking more direct steps to address equitable access to opportunity.
In the summer of 2020, SNHU partnered with the YWCA and Black Lives Matter Manchester to launch a youth listening series with young people of color, mainly high schoolers. The students were given green cards signifying their right to speak, while the adults received red cards to listen.
The point was to “make sure their concerns reached the highest power brokers in Manchester,” says Thiel.
Among the concerns mentioned were the lack of teachers who represented the racial makeup of the student body.
Thiel says there should be “hiring representation goals,” but it’s more complex than that: “more importantly, have we as a city built a culture where teachers of color can feel comfortable, feel supported, want to be here and want to raise their families here?”
The Manchester NAACP’s Education committee has been actively working with the subcommittee of the Manchester Board of Schools to ensure that the Manchester School District’s policies and procedures and the Manchester Proud strategic plan are non-discriminatory and fully support a fair and welcoming learning environment for youth of color.
Mayor Joyce Craig is working to achieve inclusiveness citywide with the Multicultural Advisory Council.
“One of the things I’ve done as mayor is making sure individuals in our community understand City Hall is accessible to them,” Mayor Craig says. “I have community office hours throughout the city, and making sure everyone understands they have a voice here and the best way we’ve felt to do that was to implement and start this Multicultural Advisory Council.”
The council had been meeting informally for some time before it was formally announced in March 2020 at the State of the City event held by the Greater Manchester Chamber.
“We’ve moved from informing the mayor of the needs and contributions of the refugee community to the diverse community,” says Arnold Mikolo, chair of the Multicultural Advisory Council. “I’m talking about ethnic, race, sexual orientation, gender and ability to strive — so it’s not just one specific area of diversity — it’s more like all aspects of diversity.”
In addition to advising the mayor on issues that impact Manchester’s diverse community, Mikolo said the council has been working to create equitable access to resources.
“My experience coming to New Hampshire was a lot of trial and error,” says Mikolo, who immigrated from the Democratic Republic of Congo and then moved up from New York. “In New Hampshire, there are so many organizations doing great work, but they’re working in isolation and that isolation creates gaps, especially in the refugee and immigrant community.”
Informing Manchester’s population of resources available to them, such as in the native language of immigrant business owners who are eligible for government assistance, is key, but Manchester’s diverse citizenry needs to be directly involved in the decision-making, says Mikolo.
“For the last eight years I’ve been living in Manchester, it’s not only the city government but a lot of entities are lacking diversity and when there is diversity, it’s oftentimes entry-level positions,” Mikolo says. “I think there is always room for improvement. Diversity is not just represented at the entry level, but executive levels and boards, where decision-making is being made, especially if decisions are being made that affect communities of color. This is the time and opportunity to intentionally be thinking about diversity.”
In August 2020, city employees completed a 40-hour training program on diversity and cultural competency, provided by a $20,000 grant from the Norwin S. and Elizabeth N. Bean Foundation and led by the New Hampshire Health and Equity Partnership and the Southern New Hampshire Area Health Education Center. Mayor Craig says the goal of the training was to help staff understand being “open to potential differences in opinion” and “working through those difficult situations with patience.”
And the structure of subcommittees within the mayor’s advisory council has been crucial to taking steps toward true representation, said Mikolo.
“The letter to the secretary of state, we got it resolved because it came through the civic engagement subcommittee,” he says. “We met with (Police) Chief (Carlo) Capano, who is retiring, to say thank you for what you did, have that discussion, but also be part of the process of hiring a new police chief. Now you have the voice of the community directly being heard at the city government and solutions will be expected because you have the department head be aware of this, and the follow-ups, and make sure there are some action steps taken out of the conversation, so we’re moving the needle in the direction where we want to see change.”
A few YWCA board members are also on the council, says Jessica Cantin, executive director of the YWCA.
“I really think it comes down to providing access points and opportunity,” says Cantin. “It’s dangerous for us in particular in New Hampshire because we are almost 90% white, so we tend to just think it’s an even playing field for everyone and that’s not the case.”
“I don’t think anybody is intentionally excluding anyone,” Cantin clarifies. “It’s about recognizing our privilege and recognizing paths to how we can share that.”
While the mayor’s Multicultural Advisory Council is focused on diversity, equity and inclusion in city government, the Manchester NAACP has been active with its committees focused on Legal Redress, Economic Justice and Environmental Justice.
“Arnold (Mikolo) is our treasurer, so he’s connected and we talk regularly about what the Multicultural Task Force is doing,” says James McKim, President of the Manchester NAACP, who also runs a consulting firm that advises on management and performance goals, including measurable DEI efforts.
Arnold Mikolo, chair of the city’s Multicultural Advisory Council
He says some companies and organizations are making inroads on social justice and diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace.
“People are really looking at what it is they can do from that social justice perspective and they’re quite pleasantly surprised to find doing something will benefit them from the bottom-line perspective as well,” says McKim, referring to McKenzie and Price Waterhouse Cooper reports that show organizations that lean into DEI outperform their peers and competition.
“I’ve been working with a number of organizations — institutional organizations, healthcare organizations, technology firms — helping them to craft their diversity, equity and inclusion strategies and helping them to implement it,” he says.
Deo Mwano, who leads engaging DEI sessions with community members and workers, told NH Business Review, “Some (organizations, such as nonprofit organizations and recovery centers) have already identified they should be more diverse and equitable and inclusive because they realize the representation of their workforce (should reflect) the clients they serve.”
“What’s been playing out nationally and socially has forced us to reevaluate ourselves and we want to do better,” says Mwano.
The Building Community of New Hampshire appointed Tilak Niroula to chairman of its board at the end of 2019, and there are other board of directors from other ethnic communities. Niroula, a refugee from Bhutan, benefitted from the resources of the nonprofit, that aims to help New Americans resettle, as well as assistance from the International Institute of New England. He is on the mayor’s Youth Service Advisory Board.
“New Hampshire has a history of welcoming refugees and people from other countries. We wanted to ensure those who embrace diversity are included in the board,” says Niroula, who works as operation manager of CarePoint Plus, a home health care aid business.
SNHU recently achieved 50/50 gender balance on its board, which includes a number of people of color, says Thiel.
Ensuring people of color are in leadership positions gives them a platform to inspire others and bring community discussions to the forefront.
Jessica Cantin, executive director of the YWCA, works to provide access and opportunity to underrepresented groups of people throughout the city.
Benjamin Paisley, general manager at the Bookery in Manchester, has used his platform to continue conversations inperson and online about the barriers and opportunities for people of color.
“There’s not a lot of people that look like me that are doing what we do,” says Paisley. “There’s a lot of Black women, but there’s not a lot of Black men in this area of this profession, and I think representation works amazingly because I can reach a lot of other people as being a person and what I’ve experienced that brought me to this level. I would have listened a lot more to someone I can relate to.”
Growing up in Alabama, Paisley noted racism is “more overt,” whereas in the North, “it’s more behind the scenes.”
It’s important to have those tough conversations, says Paisley.
In December 2020, the Manchester NAACP announced a partnership with Citizens Bank and the Center for Women & Enterprise to create and share a statewide directory of minority-owned businesses. Citizens Bank donated $10,000 to the formation and enhancement of the list, available at naacpmanchesternh. com/businesses.
The Bookery General Manager Benjamin Paisley spends a few minutes with customers outside the Elm Street shop.
Many minority-owned businesses are tucked away in the neighborhood corners of Manchester. The purpose of the list is to “invite all to frequent the businesses on the list or use those businesses as part of their supply chain,” says McKim, who will also use the list to send out informational material to business owners.
In partnership with the YWCA, the Manchester NAACP Education Committee aims to develop a collaborative hub to learn about and locate all resources available to students and their parents.
And Cantin, of the YWCA, is looking for more business partnerships that provide meaningful interaction with Manchester’s young, diverse community. Last year, Arthur Sullivan, owner of Brady Sullivan Properties, saw one of the YWCA’s educators take off her sneakers so one of the kids could play soccer. He invited kids in the program to visit a shoe store that leases from him and personally helped the kids pick out shoes.
“I think that’s a really great illustration of how a business can give back in the community, but it’s not just them giving — it’s building relationships and showing these kids aren’t invisible,” says Cantin. “You have a prominent business leader taking time out of his day to do this. It’s showing how we can all show up in the community.”
