Through the Community Organizing Initiative, Mystic residents address concerns in areas such as the environment, community development, housing, civil and human rights, and health care delivery. The Welcome Project also organizes the larger immigrant community around significant issues, such as winning the right to vote in local elections for non-citizen immigrants. All initiatives encourage participants to gain leadership skills and build community. Contributors to the focus group synthesis said:
 
The Welcome Project is an advocacy agency through which residents have an impact on structures. Residents transform the community from their own vision. The Welcome Project helps people to engage in community work, to progress toward goals as a group. It helps residents to become an activated voice in civic and political life. There is a mission of leadership development:  people who receive services transition to leadership and become role models.
 
The Welcome Project’s array of activities, however interrelated, may seem overly ambitious for an organization with a budget under $200,000 per year. It is possible to do all this only because volunteers take part in all direct service programs, and some volunteers manage their programs. Latina, Vietnamese, and Haitian women’s groups, for example, are largely peer led. Staff coordinates the Academic Achievement Initiative, but volunteers from Temple Emunah and Tuft University’s Hillel Center provide the help. Their contributions allow staff to work on additional initiatives.

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