About Us
Our Story
In August 2021, in response to the evacuation of 75,000 Afghan refugees from Afghanistan, Elizabeth Davis-Edwards, a long time advocate for refugees, quit her job as a marketing executive and formed WelcomeNST to engage communities to help resettle refugee families. More broadly, she dreamed of pioneering a community-powered model for refugee resettlement. In the years since, WelcomeNST has engaged thousands of community members from around the U.S. to form Neighborhood Support Teams (NSTs) to welcome refugee families to the U.S.​
Today, WelcomeNST enables everyday Americans to offer refuge to refugee families from Ukraine, Guatemala, Venezuela, Haiti, Syria, and around the world, proving once again that, when crisis hits, Americans will step up and meet the moment.
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Our Mission and Values
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Our mission is to unleash the power of community to offer refuge to refugees and immigrants. Our values include the following:
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The value and dignity of every human being means that every person is rich in some way.
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Unrelenting pursuit of a better way
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Converting global crises to local action
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Connecting humans in bounty and scarcity as a win-win
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Relentless incrementalism as the most effective way to create lasting change
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Engaging community as more than the sum of its parts
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Love as the most common and powerful force for change in the world
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“Our work lives far above the realm of politics. It lives at the core of every faith—to love our neighbors. It’s the great commandment and it applies everywhere in the world to everyone in the world. At the heart of it, this isn't about a program, it is about standing together in kinship with our neighbors who have arrived legally yet are at risk.”
~ Elizabeth Davis-Edwards, Founder and CEO