A Taste of Home for Afghan Refugees

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 don’t eat, to what we’ve eaten since childhood and what we were fed, to what food means to us…I find it a really powerful tool in storytelling and in opening people’s hearts and their minds.

– Samin Nosrat –

It’s 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—students aged four to fourteen, parents, teachers, younger siblings, and board members—stand side-by-side around long tables, pouring rice into bags, tying bows, sorting packets of cardamom and Earl Grey tea. In one of Hillbrook’s historic village houses, a stack of folded cards says Welcome to America! 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, “Taste of Home,” 8th grader Soraya’s 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.

At Hillbrook School, students tackle a challenging pair of questions: what matters to you? And what are you doing about it? 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. “My interest in refugees was first sparked by hearing my mom’s and grandparent’s stories of fleeing Iran,” Soraya said. “ 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.”

The idea for “Taste of Home” grew from Soraya’s love of cooking and food with her passion for helping refugees. “This felt like the perfect way to use my interests to make a difference,” she said. “Food 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 “Taste of Home” grew, Soraya noticed it contained flavors and ingredients that invoked her own sense of home: sumac, turmeric, and sabzi. The only missing flavors were “Swedish ingredients such as dill, white pepper, and cardamom, to remind me of my dad’s side of the family.”

“Taste of Home” took months of research and careful planning to bring to life this fall. The process actually began during the summer of 2021—Soraya 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’s weekly Flag gathering on Friday morning, inviting students and families to get involved by donating ingredients and grocery gift cards. “I 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,” she said. By the end of September, the box labeled “Taste of Home” in Hillbrook’s 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. 

With generous donations in place, Soraya and her mother quickly gathered the rest of the ingredients they’d need to complete the baskets—a part of the process Soraya said was “a highlight—finally shopping for the ingredients and filling the cart.” To package the ingredients, she looked for something attractive and cost-effective, researching “baskets, spice bags, and ribbons to find ones that looked nice, but didn’t cost too much so we could reserve most of our budget for ingredients.” Ever the careful planner, she created a prototype and an assembly flow to create packing stations for volunteers. 

On October 1st, Hillbrook families answered the call—the amphitheater was crowded with so many volunteers the stage could barely hold them all, and every packing station was shoulder-to-shoulder. “This project surpassed my hopes,” Soraya said. “We exceeded our initial goal—by 5pm on Friday, we had assembled 60 baskets and had leftover spices, which we are planning to use toward more!” Together with Ms. Makela, the baskets were transferred to the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Sacramento, where they would be delivered to refugees by volunteers. 

Tasha, IRC’s partner at the Sacramento food bank that accepted the donations, said, “I 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’re 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.”

As a learning experience, the sense of togetherness and giving were Soraya’s biggest and best surprise. “With 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.”

The name of this project—“Taste of Home”—invokes an experience shared by cultures and communities around the world. The food we enjoy together—preparing, cooking, and sharing—connects 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—a sliver of garlic, or the smell of oil heating in a pan—to remind us of the places we felt safe, loved, and happy. From her family’s 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—because it’s your ordinary.