Idaho to celebrate World Refugee Day 2021 with block parties, food and dance

Idahoans are invited to celebrate World Refugee Day this month!

• Twin Falls: 6 p.m. Friday, June 18
• Boise: Four mobile block parties staggered from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., Saturday, June 26

​After holding the event only online last year, the Idaho Office for Refugees and our partners are excited to bring the community together outdoors to enjoy food, dance and storytelling, and celebrate the people and cultures that enrich our state.   

Attendees will have an opportunity to receive a COVID-19 vaccine from Saint Alphonsus. (Click here for information about the clinic in multiple languages.)
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​BOISE SCHEDULE, JUNE 26

11 a.m.: Civic Park Plaza (residents/neighbors only)

11 a.m. - 1 p.m.: The public is invited to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in the Saint Alphonsus mobile clinic in the Ada County Courthouse parking lot next to the event.

12 p.m.: Sunset Park, 2625 N. 32nd St.

1 p.m.: Northwest Pointe Apartments (residents/neighbors only)
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2 p.m.: Idaho Capital Asian Market Plaza, 3107 N Cole Road

“For me the most important thing (about World Refugee Day) is how connected people still are with their culture,” said Fowzia, an emcee for the Boise events. “A dance is not just a dance. It’s their connection with their culture, It’s a form of expression. .. You have all these different people coming together saying, ‘Hey, this is part of my culture, let me teach you.'"  

Boise’s event will take a new shape this year with traveling block parties featuring dance workshops, free food from refugee- and immigrant-owned food trucks, Darjeeling Momo and Machu Picchu Peruvian Cuisine, as well as ice cream from Crazy Cow Ice Cream Co.

The Makatas Dancers, an African dance group, will perform at the first three block parties, and the Mladi Behar Bosnian dance group will lead a workshop at the final block party at the Idaho Capital Asian Market Plaza. 
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​In Twin Falls, nine countries will be represented through food, dance and poetry. The event is important because it gives local citizens and resettled refugees a chance to connect and get to know each other firsthand, said Zeze Rwasama, director of the College of Southern Idaho Refugee Programs. 

Sharing and passing down dance, language and other cultural traditions is increasingly important to Fowzia as she raises her 4-year-old daughter. She wants her daughter to be able to talk with her grandparents in Somali and learn about her heritage from her elders without an interpreter.  

​REFUGEE RESETTLMENT IN IDAHO
13,400 refugees resettled in Idaho since 1975
80 primary languages represented
46 countries represented
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Without intentionality, it’s easy to lose language skills and other traditions when growing up in a new country, said Maya Duravic, who is part of the Bosnian dance group, Mladi Behar, that will lead workshops during Boise’s World Refugee Day.  The other group that will perform, The Makatas (pictured above from 2018), will showcase African dances.
 
Maya's family resettled in Boise when she was 11. The Basque Center offered space so she and other Bosnian children could practice dancing while their parents chatted in their native language and worked on the uniforms. 
 
 “I’m really happy that we arrived to the states in a time where keeping our cultural roots is something that’s not to be ashamed of and we’re not made to forget that,” Maya said. “We’re encouraged to share that with our neighbors so they can get to know us in a different light than ‘oh, we’re just poor refugees.’ They get to know us as more than that.” 

The events are sponsored by:

• College of Southern Idaho Refugee Programs
• Idaho Office for Refugees
• Agency for New Americans
• International Rescue Committee
• City of Boise
• Bosnian-Herzegovinian Cultural Center of Idaho
• Liberian United Association of Idaho
• With generous support from the Boise City Arts & History Department and the Doris Duke Foundation