Last year’s Newroz celebration was the kind of evening that reminds you why community organizations exist. Not to do paperwork, not to file reports, not to write grant applications — but to make moments like this one possible: a hall full of Kurdish Americans, dressed in the colors of their heritage, dancing together in a country that is not Kurdistan but that they are making into home.

The 2025 celebration included something new: a display of photographs contributed by community members showing Newroz celebrations from their families’ places of origin. Pictures from Iraq, Turkey, Syria, and Iran — some of them decades old — lined one wall of the venue. People spent a long time looking at them, pointing out relatives, explaining context to their children, connecting the Newroz they were celebrating now to the one their parents celebrated before them.

This continuity is what KASA is for. The photographs on that wall were different versions of the same event — the same spring, the same fire, the same circle of people — and the celebration happening in the room was one more version in the same long line. We hope to keep adding to that line for many years.