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Monday, August 31st - KURDISH DINNER
Led by artist Belzar Aradini and Beimal Yazdanparast

Hosted by sisters Beizar Aradini and Beimal Yazdanparast, this dinner centers on what it means to cook as part of the Kurdish diaspora. Raised in Nashville, Tennessee, home to one of the largest Kurdish communities in the United States, their family arrived as refugees after fleeing the Anfal genocide, Saddam Hussein’s genocidal campaign against the Kurdish people in the late 1980s. This displaced hundreds of thousands of Kurds and forever reshaped the lives of Kurdish families across the world. This same campaign was carried out with chemical weapons and enabled in part through U.S. support for the Iraqi regime during that period.

This dinner’s proceeds will be donated to The Lotus Flower, an NGO who support women and girls in Kurdistan to build sustainable futures beyond conflict and displacement. The Lotus Flower was founded in March 2016 in direct response to the 2014 ISIS attacks on the Yazidi community in northern Iraq, one of the most devastating humanitarian crises in the region’s recent history. Nearly a decade later, The Lotus Flower continues to operate across the Kurdistan Region of Iraq with 120 locally hired staff, eight permanent women’s centers, and fifteen mobile teams. If you would like to learn more, please visit thelotusflower.org

Two seatings
5:30 - 7:00 PM and 7:30 - 9:00 PM

Presented by Public Media Institute, in collaboration with Marz Community Brewing, HotHouse and The Chicago Cuba Coalition.

@publicmediainstitute @marzbrewing @hothouse3.0 @chicubacoalition @hesam_salehbeig @coprosperitychicago @mariasbar

🎟️ Ticket Sales: https://coprosperity.org/chicago/2026/5/13/community-kitchen-dinners