By Kate Hill
Staff Writer
Cazenovia Welcomes Refugees (CWR) is a community-based initiative dedicated to working with newly resettled refugees as they integrate into American life. The organization also engages with Cazenovia residents to foster a welcoming environment for refugees to live, work and attend school.
For the past several years, CWR has presented a fall “Extending the Table” community-building dinner at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church to raise funds and awareness for refugee resettlement.
Due to COVID-19, the fourth annual event has been postponed.
The “Extending the Table” fundraiser celebrates global friendship and local hospitality.
The goal of the dinner is to bring together the people who support the resettlement of refugees in Cazenovia, and to celebrate the richness that different cultures bring to the community.
“The annual dinner [honors] the Cazenovia community as a welcoming place for people who were refugees to live, work, go to school, and enjoy the security of a safe environment,” said Cindy Sutton, who co-facilitates CWR with Caroline Cargo. “It is a lively event attended by a wide range of interested area folks. The dinner has also been our primary community fundraising event.”
During the first event in 2017, five chefs — refugees from Burma, Pakistan, Egypt, Vietnam and Syria — served their specialties at different stations in St. Peter’s social hall.
The second dinner featured a Middle Eastern menu prepared by Chef Nujoud Makhlouf, a refugee from Palestine.
Last year’s meal was prepared by Chef Ngoc Huynh, a Vietnamese refugee who lives in Syracuse with her husband and son.
Half of the proceeds from the fundraiser were used to support CWR’s efforts to resettle a refugee family currently living in Syracuse to Cazenovia.
The remainder was designated for scholarship assistance or small grants to support refugee participation in the community.
CWR plans to continue the annual tradition next year.
“Hopefully October 2021 will offer a safer environment for everyone to join together for a delicious international meal and celebrate our welcoming community,” said Sutton. “Like so many other Cazenovia community organizations, CWR has had to cancel most of our programs starting in March 2020 because of the pandemic. We look forward to holding educational events featuring people who were refugees sharing their difficult stories and their rich cultures as we have done since CWR was created.”
CWR grew out of a Common Grounds grant intended to support an initiative to improve the Cazenovia community.
Officially established in fall 2017, the CWR Steering Committee represents a coalition of local groups united by the belief that refugees contribute to economic growth and bring new perspectives and cultural richness to the community and to the nation as a whole.
The coalition also shares the belief that small rural communities, like Cazenovia, can have a big impact on global issues.
CWR is supported by multiple sectors of the community, including the Cazenovia Central School District, Cazenovia College, Cazenovia Public Library, local faith communities, nonprofit groups, local government, businesses and private citizens.
The organization supports new American families in the community by helping them to identify housing options and by facilitating relationships with employers, schools, health care providers and others.
CWR also organizes educational events in the community, which create greater awareness of the global refugee crisis and the challenges faced by refugees as they become integrated into American communities.
The organization is supported by and works in partnership with InterFaith Works of Syracuse and its Center for New Americans — an agency that provides resettlement and post-resettlement services to refugee families in the Syracuse area.
In August 2018, CWR celebrated the arrival of its first resettled refugee family — a Kurdish family from northern Iraq — in Cazenovia.
For more information on CWR, contact [email protected]. To learn more about IFW, visit interfaithworkscny.org.
