Special Board of Aldermen Meeting Page 4
March 21, 2016
that and we need to understand how those connections are being made and reach out to make Sure that those
connections are being made community wide or 10 or 20 years from now our leaders will continue to only
represent a smaller and smaller population of Nashua and that’s not helpful or healthful for any of us. Another
big piece of what the Business and Civic Goal Group is working towards is the establishment of Nashua
Listens. You’ve heard Liz talk about the initial stages of One Greater Nashua forming in the first place and
kudos to the United Way for the work that they have done over the years but in particular for bringing New
Hampshire Listens in to have a conversation about what was happening in our community and recognize the
opportunities and challenges happening in our community. There are any number of conversations that we
may and will face as a community that may be difficult for us to have. If you look nationally at conversations
around immigration; the newest people coming to our country whether they are refugees or immigrants,
whether they are legal or illegal, those conversations are happening in a very difficult environment which not
often leads to positive outcomes. New Hampshire Listens helps to train local communities to have their own
version of that; to help have conversations in the community that directly affect that community. We are hoping
to establish that within Nashua, not to run it ourselves or have it be an individual social service agency but to
have it be truly a coalition of leaders and thinkers in Nashua who learn how to have challenging conversations
as a way to lead us forward. | think if you look at a whole of what we are trying to do, it is to build leaders and
help ensure that in 10 to 20 years from now when we might not be active at the table anymore that the new
leaders understand what our Nashua is about and that they feel they belong.
Ms. Galina Szakacs, Co-Chair, Business and Civic Leadership Goal Group for One Greater Nashua
My role is a little bit different in this presentation. | joined as a coach and as a person with cultural experience
in social life and cultural adaptation. | have worked for 23 at Pfizer as a manager. OGN is not a charity. Now
you have everything, this is the land of opportunity and the American dream. Then you think why they don’t do
it, why they are not good students or why they don’t work or why they are on welfare. Why don’t they
contribute to the country that opened the door? | would like to say that we all experience difficulty to establish
who we are in this country and in this city? All of your positions didn’t come to you very easily and so you
fought to be who you are in your identify. You try to make relationships with people and a lot of people don’t
understand you and you are here on your land. People who are coming here are not of this land. They are
different people. They don’t know what to do or how to behave and | have experienced that myself. Even if
they have the ability and capacity they are not sure that they can step in and say hello | am....because they
feel that they are guests. Unless you feel that you are one of us you will not step in and you will not say that |
have a problem or say that | have something to bring to the table and we have to understand that because
actually we are interested for them to come to our house. We are not a charity giving them gifts. We are
actually personally interested in diversity. Ve would like to help them to recognize their identity, to feel like
they belong and not guests and to tell them that it is okay. Come and tell us who you are and what you can do
and we will find a pertinently. | am in the Civic and Business Goal Group and it wasn’t an easy conversation at
first. What does that mean? Does that mean | have to cut a piece of my pie and give it to them? | already
have a good business and | don’t need to spend my time but in reality what happened was every new business
coming to Nashua make our economy stronger and sustainable because we are in constant change and you
don’t know what will come tomorrow. If you have a very narrow and very focused business you might not be
flexible enough to survey. If you can increase the variety of the business you not only bring different
customers to yourself but you actually make yourself more flexible. Another point is that it is a beautiful
garden. Coming to a new country, these people coming to you, coming to a new culture, they have special
genes in their DNA. To come and cross the border and know that people speak a different language and walk
on a different side of the road, you already have to have courage, you already have to be flexible and be willing
to learn. | have a friend from Ghana and he doesn’t use a fork, | could be very biased and say well, this person
doesn’t use a fork and | asked how come he doesn’t use a fork and he said in our country everything we eat is
a stew, we don’t have water in Ghana. They are a little bit braver than we are in our comfortable situation. If
you look, more than 30% of Fortune 500 companies’ were founded by immigrants. They took a risk; they had
nothing to lose, the already lost their home and their country and they will live here for many years before this
will become their home. Every foreign born worker with an advanced degree creates 2.5 jobs for American
born workers. After decades of steady growth Nashua experienced a negative net immigration. My question is
