The Sunshine Bridge

EE: Hello there. This is The Sunshine Bridge, a show dedicated to the many diverse perspectives of those who live and work in Louisiana and who better their community. I’m Elizabeth Eads.

Atlas Foundation is an organization which is known for its efforts to bridge cultural and faith-based gaps through dialogue, activities, travel, and food. This year, Atlas Foundation is celebrating 20 years, and it’s doing so in a new building of its own. Yes, Atlas Foundation has moved to 862 O’neal Lane. It’s in the brown, house-like building next to the shopping center where the Mary Lee Donut Shop is. It’s opening its doors on March 4 at 6PM with a celebration for International Women’s Day.

Dr. Fevzi Sarac is President of the Atlas Foundation. In our interview, he was happy to share with me what he’s learned about sharing community and differences.

Dr. Fevzi Sarac: We started as an interfaith dialogue group and evolved to cover intercultural dialogue as well. Basically the foundation is inspired by a global movement called “Service Movement” “Hizmet Movement” in Turkish, and the movement encouraged people to be active in three fields: in education, to fight against poverty, and also to depolarize the community. So for this third aim, __ in Louisiana, we are trying to create depolarization. And as you know, we may have several polarization points.

EE: Right, yeah.

FS: So we are trying to, as active as we can, to come together and to get our goal at that.

EE: You know, in the last few years, definitely things have been really polarized in the States, but your organization kinda came on scene or kinda had its roots around 9/11. That’s a lot more experience I feel like in trying to depolarize some kind of situation. Do you have any kind of thoughts about what works for depolarizing communities?

FS: In my opinion, living the dialogue is more important (than) talking about the dialogue.

EE: Oh.

FS: I mean, when you click on a YouTube channel, you may find many people are talking great about love, about respect, about dialogue, about great values of our community. But at the end, what Atlas Foundation established that show it, showing that we can come together, a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Buddhist, an atheist from religious perspective, I mean, can come together and eat dinner together. Or Black people and white people can come together and can serve together, so I think that’s why Atlas Foundation is around for around twenty years.

EE: Can you tell me a little bit about its history, just like how it formed?

FS: Absolutely. It was just after 9/11 there were several Ph.D. and graduate students in New Orleans, and they are teachers, basically. One of them was their English teacher, the other was an academic in the university, so they said that - yes, we can come together. They were already organizing some book clubs, you know, conversation groups together. So they decided to establish Atlas Foundation to institutionalize these efforts.

EE: Which do think…when you talk about living it, do you think the cooking aspect of it or the food aspect of it…do you think the food aspect of it has um, had a greater impact?

FS: Yes and no. Actually, let me explain what kind of programs we are doing. For intercultural parts we are organizing movie nights, cooking classes, festivals, international festivals, art courses, and so on. And for interfaith class, we are organizing reading clubs, spiritual gatherings, and several different programs. Abrahamic tradition dinners, Ramadan dinners, and so on. And for each of them, I appreciate the events a lot. Because I see that polarization itself is not limited or related to any issue. You can polarize your community in and around almost every issue. For example, when LSU and Alabama have a game, you’re two cities, you’re two states can be polarized based on this game.

EE: Right. Right.

FS: Even can fight because they are fans of different teams.

EE: Uh-huh.

FS: So you may even polarize your community based on small issues. Of course we may have big issues too: racial inequalities, social inequalities. But if we polarize, if we create a gap in front of communication, it won’t be easy. It will be more difficult. It will absolutely more difficult to solve our problems. So I explained several different activities, and I believe that, you know, what we are trying to do is we are trying to find excuses to come together.

EE: What? I like that!

FS: And cooking and eating is great and great excuse…

EE: (laughs) Isn’t it!

FS: great excuses to come together.

EE: Tell me a little bit about the cooking clases that you have because all I know is that you have cooking classes, but I haven’t seen what kind of cooking classes they are.

FS: We hosted more than 30 countries til now. Almost 40 countries, basically.

EE: Uh…cooking class-different types of cuisine from…?

FS: Yes, yes. Absolutely.

EE: Wow. Awesome.

FS: I mean, we hosted Mexican cuisines, Arabian cuisine, Indian cuisine, several Latin American cuisines…

EE: Yeah?

FS: a European cuisines, cuisines of Switzerland, Russian cuisine…

EE: Oh man.

FS: I mean, Taiwanese cuisine.

EE: Uh-huh.

FS: So we hosted many different traditions in our international cooking class course, and basically people are coming together. Of course we have a guest and host of the week. If we host Taiwanese cuisine, a Taiwanese lady, generally, are coming and showing their dishes, and we are enjoying to eat together and to talk about Taiwanese culture…
EE: Right.

FS: and we also got a presentation about the culture that we can learn a lot more about another culture basically.

EE: What do you think people take away the most whenever they participate in one of these activities?

FS: Personally, I came here from New York. And New York is a more multicultural environment compared to here.

EE: Mmhmm.

FS: But when I was living in New York, I was generally talking…I was generally in Turkish community. But when I came down here to Baton Rouge, thanks to Atlas Foundation, I became more involved to communicate with other communities, with other cultures. Different opportunities, cooking classes was one of them. I mean, when you are presented by another culture and know how similar and how different you are from another culture, you instinctively realize that, you know, we are similar to each other. We are as a big, human community.

EE: Uh-huh.

FS: Humanity. We are the people of humanity. Yes, we have differences. And the differences are our values, not our conflict points. So, when I realized that, I see that every chance, every opportunity to come together is great for me because I learn another value from another culture, from another nation or language.

EE: Uh-huh.

FS: And I just appreciate and applause our similarities as a humanity, as the people of human beings.

EE: You know, it sounds like this is kind of…. That’s interesting when you say the differences are in values which a lot of us have a lot of similarities with versus conflicts points. It’s kind of uhh…what I’m hearing is: It kind of depends on how you see it. I don’t know if you tell me if I’m right on that or not.

FS: Absolutely. Because of that reason, the foundations like Atlas Foundation should be more and more active in our community in Louisiana. Because if you don’t visit a home of another culture, you may not realize how similar you are. I mean, every human being I’m sure are taking care of the future of their kids. Trying to find a good school for the next generation, trying to live in a good life in this world, find a good job. You know, we have several similar concerns.

EE: We all want the same things.

FS: Really we want same things. Of course, we like different tastes. And these are our values. Let me give an example to you.

EE: Okay.

FS: What is our smallest unity, smallest community in human beings? I think it is family.

EE: Oh, sure.

FS: Of course. I mean in family we have 3, 4, depending on the number of the kids. But we are a unit. We are a community. And in this community, if you don’t respect your husband or your wife, or if you say that we should really be similar as much as we can, we don’t appreciate the differences, can you really create a unit? A community?

EE: I don’t know. That sounds uh…like that’s going to start some problems. I don’t know(laughs).

FS: (laughs) I know! I am married, and I have 3 wonderful kids, and the kids are not similar at all.

EE: (laughs) Of course not. Yeah.

FS: In some points, as in your questions. But the differences are their values. I know that. I appreciate their differences. I appreciate a lot that my wife isn’t just as me, has some similar, dissimilarities, some differences because I learn a lot from her.

EE: Right.

FS: Otherwise it will be a robotic life. I mean, we are not robots. We love to have several differences and to share, to value that differences, otherwise we cannot respect each other. Otherwise we cannot even have a family.

EE: I love this. So it just sounds like, okay. We’ve got the family. Now we extend out a little, and we extend out a little, and we extend out a little. We’re all just this really big family of humanity.

FS: Absolutely. I mean, every family can realize that if they have kids and you know, partners. First thing is respect the differences. You cannot otherwise, you cannot create a family otherwise.

EE: Right.

FS: Even the sisters. I mean, I’m sure if you have a sister or brother….

EE: Oh yeah. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

FS: you have several differences(laughs).

EE: Oh yeah. Oh yeah(laughs). Oh my goodness! I love it. Okay, so…well, we were just talking about the cooking classes. My goodness. Um…yeah, tell me a little bit about the events that you guys have going on because you’ve got a couple that are coming up this month.

FS: Yes. On March 4, we will have our International Women’s Day celebration, and because of the pandemic…you know, generally we have more people in audiences, but for this time we will have 40 ladies, and they will come together, they will celebrate International Women’s Day, and they will share different experiences of themselves.

EE: Okay.

FS: We have a guest speaker, Dr. Pamela Jones. She’s a wonderful leader in our community in Louisiana. So she will be with us, and they’re organizing several games to, you know, play together and to enjoy the International Women’s Day. And after International Women’s Day, on April 2nd, Ramadan…we’ll begin Ramadan, by the way is the holy month of Muslims…

EE: Right.

FS: and Muslims are fasting in one month, in this month. So, it will start in April 2 and end in May 2, basically. And we are organizing Ramadan dinners in churches, in synagogues, in different faith centers. We will organize dinners in our homes and invite people from different cultures, different nations and religions. We are also, we will be organizing an annual dinner in this year in Ramadan. In Baton Rouge, we will organize the dinner at Boudreaux’s on April 8, and in New Orleans it will be on April 9 at Loyola University.

EE: Okay, great. And um, where can people find out about some of the smaller dinners?

FS: I mean, many of the dinners will be in our website, www.atlasfoundation.org. But besides that, we really appreciate our home dinners because, to be honest, personally I am in the same mode, and our structure is close to that too. We are focusing on small space but bigger time events. What I mean: You know, to come together in a Starbucks and to talk more than three hours, rather than to come together in a big hall, big room and spend 10 minutes in a kind of official way.

EE: Okay.

FS: We appreciate the first one a lot. So many of our events also are related and limited to home dinners. We invite many people to our homes during Ramadan to share the experience with people.

EE: Okay. So how do people get to you? How do they become invited?

FS: To be honest, during the year, in different opportunities, of course we know people. And whenever we introduce people or we know people, the first thing or the third thing, the second thing will be, you know, I will invite you to our home for a dinner and just(laughs), just wait for it.

EE: Uh-huh. Okay.

FS: So it is more a personal connection rather than an institutional connection.

EE: That’s really fun.

FS: But we appreciate and institutionally, structurally encourage that personal connection.

EE: Okay, so in other words just maybe wait and be open, and you might be invited at some point.

FS: I mean, if you come to any of our dinners, any of our gatherings, most probably you will get that personal connection.

EE: Okay, very cool.

FS: And all of our gatherings will be in our website and Facebook page and Twitter accounts.

EE: Okay.

FS: We have an active Facebook page, so if you can follow us, it will be great.

EE: And I’ll list that in the show description also. So, I just want to touch real quick on the Women’s Day event that that is happening on March 4th. And is it going to happen at the Atlas Foundation?

FS: Yes. The address is 862 O’neal Lane[corrected address] in our new building, and it will be our first event in our new building.

EE: First event?

FS: We had several small community events but first open event, let me say, in our new building.

EE: Okay.

FS: So we are excited.

EE: Yeah. Awesome.

FS: We are excited and looking forward to see as many people as we can.

EE: Atlas Foundation will host their International Women’s Day event at 6PM on March 4 at 862 O’neal Lane. Information about that and their other events can be found as I mentioned before on the links provided in the show description.

This is The Sunshine Bridge, a show about community and sharing it. Show music is by Arnav Srivistav. Special thanks for this show goes to the Baton Rouge Bluebonnet Library’s Innovation Space where this interview was recorded. I’m Elizabeth Eads. Thanks for listening.