– Samin Nosrat – <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s a hot October afternoon in the Hillbrook amphitheater, and the air smells like dust and pine. Across the stage, bottles and jars of turmeric and sabzi gleam gold and green in the California sunlight. Members of the Hillbrook community\u2014students aged four to fourteen, parents, teachers, younger siblings, and board members\u2014stand side-by-side around long tables, pouring rice into bags, tying bows, sorting packets of cardamom and Earl Grey tea. In one of Hillbrook\u2019s historic village houses, a stack of folded cards says Welcome to America! <\/em>in English and Dari. At the center of the action, Soraya, an eighth grader at Hillbrook and the reason everyone is here today, is quietly and calmly giving directions to peers and parents alike, sorting ingredients, checking on stations, and doling out tasks. One by one, gift baskets stack up in the background, filled with colorful bags tied with ribbon and neatly labeled: pistachios, mixed nuts, sumac. Over the next few hours, \u201cTaste of Home,\u201d 8th grader Soraya\u2019s refugee project, will result in sixty gift baskets for Afghan refugees, newly arrived in Sacramento, filled with the beloved flavors, spices, colors, and smells of Afghan cooking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At Hillbrook School, students tackle a challenging pair of questions: what matters to you? And what are you doing about it? <\/em>Created by the Scott Center for Social Entrepreneurship, these questions provide both an educational opportunity and a creative sandbox for student-led projects and passion-driven learning, culminating in a final Impact Project before graduation. The questions are as much a challenge as an invitation to dig deeper, discover the meaning of identity, and cultivate a sense of agency in a world where problems can sometimes seem impossibly large. As the Afghan refugee crisis hit the news in August 2021, Soraya drew on her own answers to the Scott Center questions as the wellspring for this project. \u201cMy interest in refugees was first sparked by hearing my mom’s and grandparent\u2019s stories of fleeing Iran,\u201d Soraya said. \u201c I imagined what it must be like for these refugees, young and old, to have to leave everything they know and come to a new country where people look at you differently due to the stigmas and stereotypes of refugees. I want(ed) to use my creativity to help refugees feel at home even when their whole lives are changing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The idea for \u201cTaste of Home\u201d grew from Soraya\u2019s love of cooking and food with her passion for helping refugees. \u201cThis felt like the perfect way to use my interests to make a difference,\u201d she said. \u201cFood reminds us of home. By providing refugees with Afghan ingredients, they can cook the food that reminds them of home, to keep their family recipes alive, and feel closer to their family members back in Afghanistan.” Growing up with Iranian cuisine as a dinnertime staple, it was a relatively short journey to create the ingredient list for an Afghan pantry, as many of the spices were already familiar favorites; she found further inspiration from Afghan recipes and her own research. As the wish-list for \u201cTaste of Home\u201d grew, Soraya noticed it contained flavors and ingredients that invoked her own sense of home<\/em>: sumac, turmeric, and sabzi. The only missing flavors were \u201cSwedish ingredients such as dill, white pepper, and cardamom, to remind me of my dad’s side of the family.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTaste of Home\u201d took months of research and careful planning to bring to life this fall. The process actually began during the summer of 2021\u2014Soraya pitched the idea to Annie Makala, Director of the Scott Center for Social Entrepreneurship, to strategize possibilities and find ways to involve the Hillbrook community. A few weeks after school started, Soraya created a presentation for Hillbrook\u2019s weekly Flag gathering on Friday morning, inviting students and families to get involved by donating ingredients and grocery gift cards. \u201cI felt like this was a great opportunity to involve the school community, so that they too could help newly resettled Afghan refugees, and see how they can work with Scott Center to make a difference in their communities,\u201d she said. By the end of September, the box labeled \u201cTaste of Home\u201d in Hillbrook\u2019s front office was overflowing, with containers and bags lining up across the floor. Students arriving on campus pulled bags of dried fruit and nuts out of their backpacks and pockets; parents and families brought in boxes and jars of spices. <\/p>\n\n\n\n With generous donations in place, Soraya and her mother quickly gathered the rest of the ingredients they\u2019d need to complete the baskets\u2014a part of the process Soraya said was \u201ca highlight\u2014finally shopping for the ingredients and filling the cart.\u201d To package the ingredients, she looked for something attractive and cost-effective, researching \u201cbaskets, spice bags, and ribbons to find ones that looked nice, but didn\u2019t cost too much so we could reserve most of our budget for ingredients.\u201d Ever the careful planner, she created a prototype and an assembly flow to create packing stations for volunteers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n On October 1st, Hillbrook families answered the call\u2014the amphitheater was crowded with so many volunteers the stage could barely hold them all, and every packing station was shoulder-to-shoulder. \u201cThis project surpassed my hopes,\u201d Soraya said. \u201cWe exceeded our initial goal\u2014by 5pm on Friday, we had assembled 60 baskets and <\/em>had leftover spices, which we are planning to use toward more!\u201d Together with Ms. Makela, the baskets were transferred to the International Rescue Committee<\/a> (IRC) in Sacramento, where they would be delivered to refugees by volunteers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Tasha, IRC\u2019s partner at the Sacramento food bank that accepted the donations, said<\/a>, \u201cI can tell you that we have never received a donation like this, and I am so excited about sharing these items with the families. We\u2019re resettling a lot of folks that are coming straight from Afghanistan, and one of the things I hear a lot about is how they really miss the food from home. So being able to present these to a family is…perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a learning experience, the sense of togetherness and giving were Soraya\u2019s biggest and best surprise. \u201cWith the help of the whole community, we can exceed our existing goals and make an impact together. I am also grateful to Ms. Mak for her support throughout the project, from helping organize a time for me to share a Flag presentation to helping deliver the baskets to IRC Sacramento.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The name of this project\u2014\u201cTaste of Home\u201d\u2014invokes an experience shared by cultures and communities around the world. The food we enjoy together\u2014preparing, cooking, and sharing\u2014connects us to our own sense of home; every dish, every recipe, every sprinkle of salt and scrap of dough do so much more than satiate hunger. Food creates community, connects families, keeps the lanterns lit for tradition to survive, even when our homes are falling down around us. It can be anything\u2014a sliver of garlic, or the smell of oil heating in a pan\u2014to remind us of the places we felt safe, loved, and happy. From her family\u2019s own stories, Soraya knew that even small moments of familiarity are a gift. For newcomers in a strange new city, thousands of miles from home, something as simple as an ordinary meal makes a difference\u2014because it\u2019s your <\/em>ordinary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How one Hillbrook 8th Grader found a perfect way to say “welcome home” We all have incredible relationships to what we eat, to what we …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","content-type":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,184,198,187],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-joyful-community","category-social-entrepreneurship","category-social-impact","category-the-scott-center-for-social-entrepreneurship"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/TOH-blog-header.png?fit=1146%2C648","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1686"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2465,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1686\/revisions\/2465"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hillbrook.us\/voices\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/TOH-turmeric.png\")
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