mosaic festival-pt 1

We attended the Mosaic Festival this weekend, which is a huge fundraiser put on by CWS Greensboro Immigration & Refugee Program. The event celebrates the diversity and culture of the newcomers to the city with the sharing of ethnic food, music and art. This non-profit's mission is to foster understanding and appreciation for the tremendous diversity in the city and to provide support and services to newcomers to help them build new lives here. They provide basic needs assistance, cultural orientation including English language classes, integration and referral services, job prep and placement, citizenship classes and legal services. In providing these services, they want to make Greensboro a more welcoming community for all and by the looks of it, they are succeeding. While browsing the 30 or so food tents, each offering food from different cultures, and walking through the different display and craft areas, everywhere I saw people smiling. It was a gathering of several thousand people, all there to share and learn, enjoy and support. Countries/communities represented included Burma, Nepal, Korea, India, Jamaica, Bhutan, Mexico, Iraq, the Caribbean, Latin America, the Montagnard, Congo, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Laos, Italy, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Spain, Venezuela, Ethiopia, Trinidad, Puerto Rico, Colombia...and I'm sure I've missed some, but what a collection all in one celebration! The event was joyous, the music exhilarating and the people were just beautiful. I captured nearly 300 images and what a difficult job it was to cull them down to just a few to share, but here are some photos from the day: