The City of New Orleans, supported by a $1.2 million grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, has announced the launch of a three-year initiative focused on race, reconciliation, and community building.

To be offered in partnership with the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi, Welcome Table New Orleans aims to bring together citizens of different races and backgrounds to build relationships that lead to improvements in key areas. The institute's Welcome Table model, which has been implemented in more than a dozen cities in Mississippi and elsewhere, uses facilitated small group dialogue as a tool to break down barriers and build bridges between communities.

New Orleans deputy mayor Judy Reese Morse, who is spearheading the project, told the Times-Picayune that each group will be capped at about twenty-five members and meet once a month. While each group will choose an issue or area to focus on and develop a project designed to address it, the administration plans to create a group focused on gun violence comprising mothers of victims and perpetrators and a group of young people that will focus on issues specific to their age cohort.

"The goal of Welcome Table New Orleans is to bring diverse citizens from across the city together to meet, share experiences and work together to improve neighborhoods and communities," said New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu. "As I said four years ago, race is a topic that you can't go over, or under, or around – you have to go through it. I believe our city's diversity is a strength, not a weakness, and that the people of New Orleans are ready to look closely at the ways in which race and reconciliation can have a positive impact instead of a negative impact."