The Social Concerns Forum is sponsoring a minority owned restaurant event on Sunday, April 16^th at noon. You can read more information about the restaurant, & sign-up on the Bethany website. Descriptions about various minority-owned restaurants were obtained from Kevin Dempsey, Outreach, Jean Scott, & Judi Burfield, Jessica March, and Deb Maruyama, Social Concerns Forum.  Thanks everyone! We decided to meet at New Saigon, a restaurant that has been in Denver since 1987. New Saigon serves authentic Vietnamese cuisine, and they use locally sourced ingredients in their dishes. This neighborhood became home to a number of Vietnamese immigrants during the post-war years. When local businesses like this one flourish, so do the neighborhoods & communities around them. Minority owned businesses tend to hire people from their own communities. Supporting them can help to develop job opportunities and increase financial stability. We can celebrate diversity by not only supporting minority owned restaurants, but by supporting other minority owned businesses as well. For example, according to Mary Meade & Sytonia Reid in their article, 6 Reasons to Support Black Owned Businesses, “by supporting more Black owned businesses, we can create more opportunities for building meaningful savings, credit building, property ownership and generational wealth”.  Small businesses and entrepreneurs have long been wealth builders in our society. Such diversity can help build economic vitality, while offering us a wide variety of choices that we may not have previously considered. For example, it may be time for a “change in perspective” as we taste different foods that may not be familiar to us, but which are delicious & inviting nonetheless!