 Today, the Congolese community is holding a Mother's Day celebration at the East End Community School in Portland. I'm joined by Henri, who is the president of Cocoa Main, and he's going to tell us a little bit more. Are we welcome? Thank you very much. So tell me a little bit more about this event today. Yes, today Mother's Day we decided to organize it for the first time to say a big thank you to our mothers who didn't want to pass us like that, but to celebrate with our culture. We'd like to show the world how we express our cultures and serve a huge variety, but today we'd like to focus on the music, Christian music, traditional music, popular music. We'd like to say a big thank you to our mothers. We'd like to thank them, we are so proud of them, so many gifts that we are going to give them and so many wonderful things. Our very own mayor of Portland, Ethan Strimling, made an appearance at the festivities. How do you think these kind of events not only integrate other communities with our own communities, but also give us an awareness of different cultures and backgrounds? Sure, it's absolutely about learning about different cultures and backgrounds, but from my perspective it's really about building our economy and this is the next generation of our economy that's here and helping to build what it is that Portland is going to become. The city right now has 10,000 folks who are born in other countries who have come here to this city and they make us stronger every day. How long did it take for you to plan the event? It took us like three weeks, but it was intense because we thought about it like short time, we were short about time and we said we need it, we need to do it. So we took three weeks, a lot of meetings, planned the event, how we would go. And because we said ready mothers, we say our mothers today, the community, we will give the gift to mothers, all mothers we will have today a gift. Beside the gift, we said we're going to take this chance while we celebrate our mothers, we will also express our culture out there. So it's why we plan to have different kind of how we celebrate in our country music, gospel music, and we're going to have also popular music how we celebrate. The mother's day is really international, but they've never been appreciated as a mother, just at least to say thank you as a mother. So I just thought about it, I said okay this is a new Congolese community of mine, so we really need to value our mother because they came from different places, refugees and they just migrated here, so they really need to be recognized. So we put that project together, so it was an idea combining with all of us that in the Congolese community we are creating an event. As Portland's cultural diversity continues to grow, many immigrant communities are sharing their culture and customs through these kinds of events. Today the Congolese community is opening the door for cross-cultural dialogue and introducing Portland to its new residents through a Mother's Day celebration. What we would like to have, it's not only an event for the Congolese mothers, Congolese ladies, it's for all the mothers of the world. We would like to tell them that we love them, we care for them, as the same way they care for us, maybe they need more, too much, because the scientists were even babies and how we bring them. But it's an event for all the communities, so we can be together to show love to one another, peace to one another. This is by doing that you can build a better world, this is why I thought we thought that we should bring more mothers together. We should bring everybody, not even the mothers, but men as well, come and support everybody, the ladies, and have a wonderful time. In our culture, to celebrate is mostly to dance, so that would be it. But is there any traditional, how do you think? Right now, I don't know if you work with them. It's with a group of Congolese women who play drums, so that's typical, that's something, it's typical Congolese. Many gather to enjoy the festivities, which included traditional Congolese music and food, as well as gifts and flowers for all the mothers in attendance.