What’s Kaleidoscope?
Advocating for our most vulnerable neighbors is important work. Catholic Charities was awarded a $15,000 grant to build a pilot program involving community outreach and education designed to increase understanding of our foreign-born neighbors and to build community. Kaleidoscope is the name we’ve given our program, which will culminate on March 23, 2024, with a free family-friendly multicultural festival. It will celebrate the rich diversity of our local community. Food, hand-crafted items, and games will be part of the event. We will host many of the ethnic and cultural Catholic communities in the area, as well as other organizations that focus on strengthening community bonds across Nashville’s many international groups.
13%
More than 13 percent of the U.S population (or 40 million people) is foreign born. The combined population share of foreign-born individuals and their U.S.-born children is approximately 26 percent.
Why Nashville?
Catholic Charities, Diocese of Nashville was chartered in 1962 in order to help 43 Cuban children who were sent to Nashville and who were part of a total cohort of 14,000 evacuated to the U.S. as part of Operation Pedro Pan during the communist takeover of Cuba. Over its 61 years, Catholic Charities has partnered with the city of Nashville and its citizens to welcome the stranger. Our agency has professional employees of different nationalities and many religious backgrounds—not just Catholic—who want to help and give back for all the good they have received from the Nashville community. Many of those professionals are former immigration and refugee clients, now citizens of the United States.