Photo: Annie Spratt | Unsplash
Flavors From Afar is an LA restaurant that offers an eight-week course for select trainees from the refugee community. This restaurant serves empowerment for refugees as the main dish; at the end of the course, trainees leave with everything they need to launch a career as a chef. “Everybody needs to eat,” says Maymuna Hussein-Cattan, the founder of Flavors From Afar. “I want to help refugees find jobs but at the same time highlight their strengths and culture, celebrate their experiences and demystify stigma. You always hear about a refugee crisis, but most people never learn the real story of the people behind the news.” Hussein-Cattan knows these complexities only too well because she was born in a Somali refugee camp. Her mother had fled Ethiopia and spent 12 years in the refugee camp, where she gave birth to Hussein-Cattan. After they emigrated to California in 1984, Hussein-Cattan completed a master’s degree in developmental organization and wanted to give back to fellow refugees. The culinary program is one offering of the Tiyya Foundation, a grassroots effort to help refugees with anything from food to job search, which Hussein-Cattan was instrumental in founding.
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