Greenwich High School Twins Stand Out as Volunteers for Building One Community

By Avery Imp and Victoria Liu/ Greenwich Free Press

For more than five years, Greenwich High School seniors Mateo and Nicolas “Nico” Gigliani Alcantarilla have spent Saturday mornings volunteering at Building One Community, a Stamford-based nonprofit organization whose mission is to advance the successful integration of immigrants and their families into the community.

Building One Community, or “B1C” for short, provides immigrants with a variety of services related to healthcare, employment, the legal system, and education, helping them to achieve self-sufficiency and success. Since 2011, the organization has served more than 15,250 immigrants from 117 different countries.

Mateo and Nico are first-generation immigrants themselves.

“We were born in Madrid to a Spanish mother and an Argentinian father,” Nico said. “Arriving in this unfamiliar land, the first people to welcome our family into our new home was the immigrant community…I am filled with gratitude to know that we have been blessed enough to be able to provide that outreached set of hands to so many others.”