By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Dowagiac's Institute for International Cooperation and Development (IICD) Nov. 18 hosts its first International Benefit Dinner.
Volunteers training for Africa at the IICD, 56968 Dailey Road, are planning a participatory evening of cuisine and culture from their homelands, including Japan, Brazil, Norway, Korea and the United States.
They depart Dowagiac in January for Zambia or Mozambique, according to Henrique Fabian De Carvalho, an attorney from Brazil.
They arrived in August and are about halfway through the six-month orientation program.
"Because we are so diverse," said Debbie Abo of Washington, D.C., "we would like to introduce each of the cultures in ways of fashion – traditional dress of Korea, Japan and Africa – and also the food and music. And then we were going to show some clips regarding the program in Africa."
Benefit tickets cost $50 per person. Contact Debbie or Director Line Henricksen, who came to IICD Michigan in Dowagiac in 1999 from her native Norway, for tickets at (269) 591-0518.
"The idea for the benefit dinner came from trying to get us known in the city," Abo said. "A lot of people don't know about us because a lot of the domestic volunteer services that we do are in Niles, South Bend and Benton Harbor because they're bigger cities and have shelters and things like that. Dowagiac doesn't, so most of the help that's requested comes from those places. This is a way for us to introduce ourselves."
Sushi will be served as an appetizer. "We all love it," Henriksen said. "It's an upscale Japanese dish. People should come just for that."
The main course will be salmon and beef. The dessert will be Scandinavian. "We also will have Japanese teriyaki stir-fry," Henriksen said, and, from Korea, a spicy cabbage dish.
"We want to do both, traditional American, but with an international flavor," Henriksen said Friday.
The IICD will also be raffling off a dish washer as part of the benefit dinner to send five volunteers to Africa.
Henriksen said they want guests to learn African dances and songs so that they will be learning about other cultures while they are being fed, entertained and having fun.
"We've never tried this before, so we are very excited to see how this will go," Henriksen said. "We have already gotten some backing from the local churches that Debbie has been involved with."
Judy Truesdell's campaign bought six tickets while visiting the IICD with Democratic attorney general candidate Amos Williams on Oct. 29.
Carvalho, the lawyer, said his desire to "do something different for a year" brought him to Dowagiac, and eventually, Mozambique.
JiEun Cho from Korea studied architecture and designs furniture.
"I finished in February," she said. She's responsible for the painting of the African continent which adorns a dining hall wall. She became interested in volunteering abroad after visiting Laos.
Takashi Ujakawa and Makido Endo are both from Japan.
Takashi studied international relations "and wanted to learn more about it," he said. "I wanted to see Africa. I've learned a lot of information, but I don't know if it's true or not. I want to see with my own eyes."
Endo worked for Coca-Cola. "I was interested in economic development," she said.
Abo is not only the sole African-American, but she's "much, much older" than her fellow volunteers.
"I'm old enough to be their mom," Debbie said. "My parents were community service workers." She's the fourth of 13 children. "Myself, I was a mom, grandmom and wife, all that. I had a career as a patient advocate at Georgetown University medical center. They had a reduction in force, so I was between jobs. I saw the IICD Michigan poster, and I was doing a lot of international work in the U.S. with African people who traveled here. My church represented 42 nations, so I was doing paperwork, training and raising funds for people who didn't have insurance and had to have surgeries. The poster was at the right place at the right time before I started a new career."
Because two of her brothers operate a vocational school in Maryland for culinary arts and auto mechanics, Debbie wants to spin that off into a school in Zambia," she said. "We're going to add on cosmetology and nursing assistance.
"I want to do that in respect to my aunt, 92, who passed," Abo said. "Even with all my contacts with African people, I didn't have enough courage – and my two older brothers are not going to travel to Africa – but they wanted to do an international thing and connect the two. That's the long-range plan. I have a passion for getting to Africa, so I'm trying to raise the funds whatever way I can. I'm going to Zambia, and I got the privilege of meeting the ambassador. She's a member of my church. She is pushing me because she wants to do an orphanage."
There is also an IICD in Massachusetts, which would seem closer to Abo in Washington than Dowagiac, but she said, "I got to visit there, but I wouldn't have stayed because it's so cold," even though "it's in the mountains and very beautiful," compared to a campus set down in the cornfields of southwest Michigan.