Cultural Tapestry

Quilting and textiles are not only artistic but extremely personal and culturally specific. In this episode, Lisa and Rebecca visit with Lindy Claussen with the International Quilt Museum highlighting how the museum connects its mission and art to immigrant and refugee communities in Lincoln, and builds belonging across our community. 

Asian Center team members Samia Ahmed and Ommohal Koko share about the various programs, services, and activities that the Asian Center provides for Arabic speaking immigrants and refugees in Lincoln.

Civic engagement and voting can feel complicated and daunting for naturalized citizens. In this episode, Lisa and Rebecca visit with Melisa from the Nebraska Civic Engagement Table about their work with the Asian Center to engage naturalized citizens in the voting process, addressing practical barriers and encouraging newcomers to use their voice.

Guests Khamisa Abdalla from the Asian Center and Gina from Friendship Home discuss how domestic violence presents in immigrant families and how to raise awareness and provide support for survivors.

Rebecca shares about the Asian Center's popular annual Harvest Moon Festival. Then Thuy Ho and her talented friends share about their Vietnamese dance group The Pink Ladies.

Learn about the book The Lives of Immigrants & Refugees, an anthology of personal essays from immigrant and refugee neighbors in Lincoln, Nebraska. Hear from editors Dr. Joy Castro and Dr. Emira Ibrahimpasic about their hopes for what this book will bring to Lincoln. Then, one of the authors, Amir Waly, shares his story including fleeing war-torn Iraq to find safety and build a future for his family in Lincoln.

Thuy Ho, the Asian Center's Vietnamese Advocate, shares her inspiring journey. From losing her parents at the age of six and struggling to find her place to building home in Lincoln and becoming a respected leader in the local Vietnamese community, Thuy's story exemplifies resilience.

အတၢ်ပၥ်ဖျါထီၣ်လၢပှၤကညီတဝၢအဂီၢ်

ဖိဖိဒီးလွဲလၢ အ့ၤရှၢၣ်ဆဲထၢၤအ

လီၢ်ခၢၣ်သးပှၤကညီကရၢအတၢ်တဲ
ဖျါထီၣ်ဘၣ်ဃးဒီးတၢ်ရဲၣ်တၢ်ကျဲၤ

ဒီးတၢ်မၤစၢၤလၢအအိၣ်ဆူပှၤကညီ
တဝၢအအိၣ်န့ၢ်လီၤ. ပတူၢ်လိၥ်မုၥ်ပှၤကိၤဂၤလၢကကနၣ်ဒီးရၤလီၤ, 

ဒ်သိးဒီးတံးသကိးတဖၣ်ကသ့ၣ်ညါအါထီၣ်ဘၣ်ဃၤဒီးအ့ရှၢၣ်စဲထၢၤ,နုၥ်လီၤပၣ်ဃုၤမၤသကိးလၢပှၤတဝၢအကျါ,ဒီးသူၣ်ထီၣ်သကိးဟံၣ်လၢအဂ့ၤတပူၤဃီန့ၢ်တက့ၢ်.

Asian Center Karen staff, PoePoe and Lwe, share about the many programs and services available to support Karen immigrants in Lincoln.