Our logo includes the phrase, “I’m your neighbor” in Arabic, English, Farsi, French, Khmer, Kirundi/Kinyawanda, Korean, Somali, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
The logo was created in 2012 by a group of volunteers who were planning a city-wide read of Immigrant and New Generation children’s literature in Portland, Maine.
The creation of it was simple. Anne Sibley O’Brien, one of our founders, went to the multilingual department at Portland Public Schools with sheets of paper and a Sharpie. Every translator that was in the office that day enthusiastically hand-wrote the phrase, “I’m Your Neighbor” in their home language. The small design company Moth Written, an intentional cross-cultural and cross-faith collaboration, enclosed all of the phrases into a speech bubble. The design was intentional. It represents the belief that anyone speaking any language and from any background could say, “I’m your neighbor” to another. This logo, thus, is reflective of the immigrant communities in a single refugee resettlement city at a single moment in time.
In 2017, we created the Welcoming Library for that same Maine community. The book collection with the discussion questions we created and embedded was instantly impactful. We started to innovate and share the project. It went to a neighboring state and then by word of mouth spread from Maine to California to Canada. By the fall we will have close to 500 installations. Each collection includes the best children’s books telling the stories of modern (1970 and forward) non-European migration, resettlement, and the new generations that arise and thrive.
Throughout our growth, the logo has remained.
We are occasionally asked about other languages. It is a bit of a heartbreak each time. How do we ever represent all the languages spoken by modern migrants? At that same school system where we gathered hand-written phrases in 2012, there are now over 50 languages spoken. Then, of course, there are 7,000 languages spoken in the world.
The only way to make the logo truly representative of the world we live in is to do away with it altogether.
But at every event we attend from local cultural festivals to national conferences, community members are delighted to see non-English scripts and languages. Children of all backgrounds run their fingers over the logo. They light up when they see a language they know and are deeply curious when they see a language they do not.
The logo is not intended to leave out languages, it is meant to celebrate languages.
And, still, at the heart of it, the logo says exactly what we want it to say. We are all neighbors.
