By Issa A. Mansaray
“I will say the turnout is great,” said Nigerian
Binta Kawu, surveying the Dakota County Community
Action Council (CAC) cultural festival and resource
fair on January 12.
“Up till the last minute, people
were calling to say that they wanted to be part of
it.”
The fair, hosted at a Burnsville church,
attracted more than seven hundred people.
“We kept adding on the list of participants,” said
Kawu(photo).
“In the beginning, we thought there wouldn’t be
a turnout.”
For Kawu, the fact that many more Africans
turned out than she expected proves that people are
responding to the Community Action Council’s outreach
program. The event was a first for the Dakota County
Community Action Council’s New American Services
Collaborative. The fair brought together forty-one
different agencies working with immigrant communities.
Groups from Africa, Chile, Bolivia, Laos, and other
countries played drums and performed traditional
dances. For almost half an hour, Chile Sin Fronteras,
a Chilean group in colorful folk dresses entertained
participants. Nkauj Hmoob Zoo Nkauj and Txhais Nkauj
Xwb performed the traditional Hmong dance from Thailand
and Laos.
“It is to show what the Hmong tradition is,” said Yer
Xiong, 16, a dance teacher at the Hmong American
Partnership.
“It is to show how the clothes look like,
and to show what we usually do at big events.”
“People here are having fun,” said Alix Ibarra,
director of CAC’s New American Services. “So we have a
group from Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and
Africa. It is a diverse group that is going to
participate.”
The CAC initiative began last July by making contact
with many of the community organizations in Dakota
County. A collaboration that started with twenty
organizations has grown to about forty-five community
groups. Through raffles, students at District School
191 raised $4,000 to sponsor the resource fair through
raffles. BlueCross and BlueShield of Minnesota,
Fairview Ridges Hospital, Dakota County Public Health,
and many other nonprofit organizations sponsored the
event. BlueCross and BlueShield provided funds for
African food. The organizers served free food and
drinks for participants.
“We want to do it in part because the African and
Latino community are similar in certain aspects,” said
Ibarra. “It is why we tried to make it in a certain
way that is very attractive, where we can have
entertainment for children and a lot of food from
different countries.”
According to Ibarra, the Community Action Council also
works with almost 48 schools in Dakota County. The CAC
tries to deter domestic abuse, help children to be
successful in school, and help families to be
self-sufficient.
In many schools, CAC’s New American
Services educate community leaders to understand the
different cultures, educate new immigrant community to
adapt to their new homeland, and then create resources
to help their families.
Storefront, founded 27 years ago to help immigrant
parents with children in schools, joined CAC’s
community initiative a year ago. “It will help in
bringing the community together,” said Somali Asha
Guled, parenting empowerment program coordinator at
Storefront. “Our mission is to help the immigrant
families in schools.”
With increasing health problems among immigrants,
insurance and health institutions decided to join
CAC’s initiative. “We have a lot of members in this
part of Dakota Country,” said Shereese McIntosh,
MEDICA regional coordinator. “We want to come out to
support the community. Also, we want to engage with
members and prospective members in the community.”
For BlueCross and BlueShield, the partnership has been
fruitful since joining CAC’s New American Initiative
few months ago. “We work with them (CAC) to reach out
to the New American Communities,” said Karen J. Major,
director of government programs and external relations
at BlueCross and BlueShield. “The first thing we’ve
done with them is to donate and sponsor funds towards
the event.”
Representatives of participating organizations
expressed enthusiasm about the event. For Tina Kush
from Adult Basic Education (ABE), the fair offered an
open opportunity to look for prospective adult
students from the immigrant community. The ABE offers
free classes for adults who want to learn English,
work toward a high school diploma, or prepare for the
GED exam.
Ardis Lether and Doreien Busch from the School for
Adults said they also offer classes for families in
Burnsville and Savage. For them, the resource fair is
the best place to recruit new students.
At the fair, the Burnsville Fire Department displayed
a huge billboard on emergency medical care and fire
safety awareness and distributed information booklets
in two languages to visitors. The department hopes to
translate the fire safety literature into other
languages.
The Dakota County Attorney’s office sees the resource
fair as an opportunity to interact with the immigrant
community to talk about crime prevention, and
available legal resources. “We have been involved in
this partnership, in this collaborative, so our office
is able to reach out and let the citizens know that we
are available,” said Monica Jensen, community
relations and crime prevention at the Dakota County
Attorney’s office.
“So if a crime has been committed against them,
if they are a victim, if they have restitution or
services that they need throughout the court process,
we are a friendly face. We do have those
materials and resources, and ready with any
explanation we can to help bring people through that
process.”
Jensen said that while her office has “an obligation
to uphold the law and hold people accountable when
they do break the law,” at the same time, the
attorneys also have “a lot of ways to help those
individuals through the process.”
Realizing that many new immigrants lack information about U.S. legal processes, Jensen said, “this is our chance to not be the enemy, to show that we’re here to hold people
accountable for the good or the bad that they do.” Her
office, she adds, “also provides whatever we can to
help people out of that situation.”
The CAC plans to make the fair an annual event.
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