Around the Table

A community-engaged research project and podcast

Episode 7: friendship kitchen, taste of home, belonging dinners – ha na park, min-goo kang

On this episode of Around the Table, my collaborator Fionna Chong and I are in conversation with Reverends Min-Goo Kang and Ha Na Park about their dinner projects – Friendship Kitchen, Taste of Home, and Belonging Dinners.

Ha Na Park started Friendship Kitchen in 2017 at The United Church in Meadowood in Winnipeg Manitoba on Treaty 1 territory, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene Peoples, and the Homeland of the Red River Métis. The project supported newcomers to Canada and embraced a diversity of experiences – for example, two participants came to Canada through refugee sponsorship from persecution of sexual orientation and from the Syrian civil war. Friendship Kitchen built relationships of trust, friendship and community between newcomers and non-newcomers.

After Winnipeg, Ha Na and their partner Min-Goo moved to Victoria, the ancestral unceded territories of the Lekwungen and WSANEC peoples, the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSANEC nations, to join the ministry team at Broadview United. In 2023, Min-Goo started Taste of Home, an intercultural community-building program for newcomers who’ve made Canada their home in the last five years. Here participants share food and memories through cooking and eating together, and exchange stories about the cultural significance of the food.

In his role as Spiritual Care Provider in the Student Wellness Centre and Multifaith Centre at the University of Victoria, Min-Goo initiated another dinner program – Belonging Dinners where students cook and share a meal together, build connection and community. It provides a safe space for storytelling around the table in a holistic and embodied way that honours connections between body, mind and heart.

BIO

Min-Goo Kang has a strong sense of place, and likes to explore his surroundings. He believes that every place has its unique beauty. He was ordained in the Presbyterian Church in Korea in 2004 and was admitted to the United Church of Canada in 2010. He has been serving both in a Korean-speaking congregation as well as in English-speaking congregations in Canada over the last 18 years. He is currently working at Broad View United, in Victoria, BC as Intercultural Program Minister. He believes that becoming an intercultural church is deeply spiritual work. It begins with knowing who we are, where we came from, and where we belong. With deep spirituality, he integrates his Asian heritages such as Daoism and Buddhism into his theology and practice. Min-Goo is passionate about creating a space where people can feel safe enough to bring their authentic selves.

Ha Na Park (she /they) is an ordained minister in The United Church of Canada, currently serving at Broad View United, Victoria, BC. Her family migrated from Korea in 2007, when her older son, Peace, was 7 months old. In that year of transition, Ha Na realized that she had become the moon, “Which lives by depending on another and shines by reflecting another’s light” while living as the shadow of her ordained husband of two years. Since then, Ha Na has strived to be the Sun again and keep that poetic image as her motivation. Her recent path has been leading her to continue to evolve through her various interests and passions. Ha Na has committed herself to deepening her understanding of intercultural ministry, decreasing racism, and questioning white privilege in her institution, and decolonizing herself, her work and her theology. She believes in friendship and mutuality as the antidote to racism, and seeks liberation from patriarchy and racism for women of colour. In addition, Ha Na embraces mysticism and spirituality to help build resistance to oppression.

RESOURCES

Transcript available here.