Croatian girls slipped out of their white tamburitza dresses and into black soccer shorts and sneakers Saturday while the next act — the Mon Community of Ohio — took the stage at Akron’s Global Village Festival.
Six girls — dressed in matching red skirts that symbolized the blood spilled by their ancestors and white blouses symbolizing their purity — performed a dance to show the importance of education.
It ended with each girl holding a different card revealing all the letters of the Mon alphabet.
“We think it’s important to remember our heritage,” Hong Ai, 15, said after the dance was over.
Akron’s Mon community — mostly Buddhists who emigrated from Myanmar (once called Burma) — began settling locally in 1992 through the International Institute of Akron, just one wave of immigrants that have helped make Akron what it is.
On Saturday, the city and the United Way of Summit County celebrated some of Akron’s newest residents with the Global Village Festival and, at the same time, thanked longtime residents who have stayed rooted here for generations. The annual festival, which started at Lock 3 in 2012, moved to the yard in front of the Jennings Community Learning Center in North Hill this year.
Elaine Woloshyn, executive director of the International Institute of Akron, said North Hill is the perfect fit for the festival because of its diversity. Older Italians and Polish immigrants and their descendants live here alongside African-Americans and more recent refugee arrivals from Bhutan, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Congo.
That diversity brings strength and energy, she said, pointing to a picture of North Hill’s Crest Bakery and Nepali Kitchen.
Crest is still using some of the same recipes it did when it opened in 1939.
And Nepali Kitchen — Akron’s first Nepali restaurant — opened last year. The two Bhutanese immigrants who opened the eatery first settled in Dayton but came north to Akron because of its larger Bhutanese community. The two men have since purchased a bar and plan to open a convenience store, Woloshyn said.
“North Hill is going to be the next trendy neighborhood in Akron,” she said.
Children — black, white, Asian, Arab and Hispanic — darted among the tables set up at the festival Saturday, blowing Native American pipes, learning origami and eating tacos.
As the breeze picked up, Victoria Wagner and others at the Asian Services in Action (ASIA) booth fought to keep brochures and fliers from blowing away.
On the nearby stage, Polynesian music began to play and Hula Fusion — a group wearing short, yellow sarongs and carrying feathered gourds called uli ulis — started to dance. Grupo Fuego, a Puerto Rican/Dominican group, was followed by Chinese musicians and the Rhodes Street Rude Boys, an African-American/Polish reggae ska band scheduled to take the stage later in the day.
Wagner, who manages interpreting and translation services for ASIA, said her office employs more than 100 interpreters who speak more than 50 languages, from Serbian and Uzbek to Laotian and Hmong. They help immigrants with everything from medical appointments and court hearings to taking standardized tests in schools and understanding documents and forms.
Northeast Ohio draws people from around the globe, Wagner said, “so you can see the world from here.”
Amanda Garrett can be reached at 330-996-3725 or agarrett@thebeaconjournal.com.