CAZENOVIA — On Saturday, May 6, Cazenovia Welcomes Refugees (CWR) will hold its fourth “Extending the Table” fundraising dinner in celebration of global friendship and local hospitality. This is the organization’s first community-building dinner since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ngoc Huynh, the owner of Mamma Hai Vietnamese restaurant at Salt City Market in Syracuse, will be preparing lemongrass chicken curry, glass noodle salad, and spring rolls. A vegetarian option will also be available.
The event will be held at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church at 10 Mill St. in Cazenovia. Dinner will be served in two seatings, the first at 5 p.m. and the second at 6:45 p.m.
“The pandemic shut everything down, so [it’s exciting] to just be able to go back there and do this kind of community dinner where people from all walks of life come together and sit down for some beautiful food,” said CWR Steering Committee member Carla Zimmerman, who is chairing the event.
The fundraiser is aimed at furthering CWR’s mission to work with people who were refugees as they integrate into American life and to engage with the residents of Cazenovia to create a welcoming place for everyone to live, work, go to school, and enjoy recreation together.
According to Zimmerman, the organization is hoping to sell out all 150 tickets — 75 available per seating — and draw attendees from beyond the Cazenovia area, such as Colgate University and towns closer to Syracuse.
About CWR
CWR is a collaborative community-based initiative that began in 2016 and includes representation from educational institutions, local government, faith communities, non-profit groups, refugee resettlement organizations, civic organizations, businesses, and private citizens. The group helps New American families to identify housing options and facilitates relationships with employers, schools, health care providers, etc. Its members also organize educational events to increase awareness of the global refugee crisis, the challenges refugees face as they integrate into American communities, and the many benefits they bring to places like Cazenovia.
The organization is supported by and works in partnership with InterFaith Works of Central New York and its Center for New Americans, which has provided resettlement and post-resettlement services to refugee families in the Syracuse area for over 40 years.
According to CWR Steering Committee member Chris Wnorowski, Cazenovia’s connection to InterFaith Works goes “way back” to when CazCares food pantry and clothing closet and The Key consignment shop started working with the agency to collect and distribute food and winter clothing to refugee families in the Syracuse area.
CWR celebrated the arrival of its first resettled refugee family — a Kurdish family from northern Iraq — in Cazenovia in August 2018.
In 2021, CWR teamed up with InterFaith Works and Cazenovia College to renovate a two-story college-owned house at 43 Lincklaen St. as part of CWR’s resettlement project. A family of New Americans from Afghanistan moved into the home in July 2022.
Upon arriving in the United States, both refugee families were initially settled in Syracuse, but after visiting Cazenovia, they decided to relocate to the quieter, more rural community.
“They weren’t placed here; they chose to come here,” said CWR Chair Carolyn Holmes.
Holmes also said that one of the goals of InterFaith Works and CWR is for Cazenovia to become a model for other communities, providing refugees with more resettlement options outside of urban centers.
Since moving to Cazenovia, two members of the Iraqi family have earned American citizenship. According to Zimmerman, the Afghan family is currently working on their paperwork so that they can become citizens as well.
“It’s great to see that through, it’s a huge accomplishment, and it’s great for them to get that,” said Zimmerman. “It’s a long process. They have their own country that they left behind, and they will always live in two worlds, of course, but [it’s positive to see them] adopt this new world and make it their own. Hopefully, we can help to make this world better in certain ways than the one they left behind.”
According to Wnorowski, getting to the point where the organization could sponsor its first family took a lot of planning and a significant amount of time.
“I think back on the first meetings we had in the library, and there were maybe 20 people there with different levels of experience in education or literacy or [other fields],” she said. “We had so many meetings where we were just sort of brainstorming what to do to be able to make it happen to sponsor a family. . . It was at least two years before it actually became a very positive working group in the community.”
The CWR Steering Committee currently has 19 members, according to Holmes.
Since the organization’s founding, the committee has always included two Cazenovia High School students who have been involved in various ways, such as helping the first resettled family move into their new home, assisting with the fundraising dinners, and getting other students to participate.
“[Both resettled] families have children, so these particular high schoolers can also be that link inside the schools to reach out to some of those students,” said Zimmerman.
Holmes also pointed out the close relationship CWR has maintained with Cazenovia College, specifically highlighting two students who have been pitching in to assist the Afghan family, an Albany-based alumnus who has been offering her computer tech services for nearly three years, and Dr. David Bergh, who sits on the steering committee.
Extending the Table
According to Holmes, the proceeds from the upcoming fundraiser will help support the resettlement of another family in the future and sustain all CWR programs, including those focused on education outreach.
CWR presented the first Extending the Table dinner in 2017.
The Reverend Jeanne M. Hansknecht, who was the rector of St. Peter’s at the time and a member of the CWR Steering Committee, spearheaded the initiative and offered up the parish hall and its large kitchen for the event.
“It was a continuing relationship [with the church],” said Holmes, who noted that CWR had been holding monthly meetings at the Carriage House — a St. Peter’s owned property — since pretty much the beginning of the organization.
The church’s current rector, The Reverend Rebecca Roberts, who is also a CWR Steering Committee member, said joining CWR and continuing the work Hansknecht had started with the group was important to her.
“So often when we see things happening in the world, we wonder, ‘Well, what is it that I can do?’” said Roberts. “And [we think], ‘Oh, well it’s just me, I can’t really make a big difference.’ This group went beyond that. They saw how they could do [something] and worked to bring big change to two different families.”
The first three annual Extending the Table events highlighted Syracuse-area refugee and immigrant chefs who prepared menus of authentic ethnic foods from their homelands in Burma, Egypt, Pakistan, Vietnam, Syria and Palestine.
At the most recent dinner, which was held in the fall of 2019, Huynh prepared a Vietnamese meal for 147 guests.
According to the Mamma Hai website, mammahai.com, the chef was born in Vietnam, escaped to Japan as a refugee, and was raised in Nebraska. She learned how to cook from her mother and aunts; they owned a cafe and catering business, and she helped to prep and taste test.
Huynh earned a degree in journalism from Syracuse University, and after a career as a reporter with The Post-Standard and in refugee resettlement with Catholic Charities of Onondaga County, Huynh reentered the culinary world.
“It just felt like she was the right kind of person to bring back in [this year],” said Zimmerman. “Her food worked for a lot of people and was also very high quality. And with her having been a refugee and doing this now, it just really made sense to work together with her. . . She is just a very lovely person to work with, very easy.”
Tickets for the 2023 Extending the Table dinner are $50 and can be purchased at 20|EAST, J.S. Hight & Sons, Matthews Salon Spa, and online at cazwelcomesrefugees.org.
For more information on CWR, visit cazwelcomesrefugees.org/index.html or contact [email protected].
To learn more about InterFaith Works, visit interfaithworkscny.org.
