Light the Way: The Campaign for Berkeley

When Khanh-Hoa Nguyen ’16 visited her home in Los Angeles, she discovered the unfamiliar aroma of papaya and pigs’ feet soup.

Her mother was preparing — from memory — the nutritionally rich stew to help her sister recover from childbirth. Without a written recipe, Nguyen wondered, could this tradition vanish?

The next semester, Nguyen jumped at the chance to join Dr. Marilyn Wong, a retired physician, in researching postpartum traditions through the Asian American Pacific Islander Health Research Group. For two years, 15 students interviewed grandmothers, mothers, and other relatives to document recipes and traditions typically handed down orally.

Ultimately, their work culminated in From Mothers to Mothers: A Collection of Traditional Asian Postpartum Recipes, a cookbook that includes recipes from six cultures printed in English and their native languages.

The next challenge was getting the recipes to new mothers in low-income, Asian American populations. The team partnered with Berkeley Crowdfunding, a university-sponsored platform to help turn great ideas into reality, and led Cal’s highest performing crowdfunding project to date — raising nearly 250 percent of their initial goal in one month. More than 500 books were printed that will be distributed to health clinics and libraries for free.

“People were saying, ‘I wish I had this when I was pregnant,’ or… they just recognize the importance of preserving the cultural information,” Kristine Nguyen ’11, another team member, shared with Nguoi Viet Daily News. “And who doesn’t like food?”

More than 70 projects, two-thirds of which have hit or exceeded their goals, have been featured on crowdfund.berkeley.edu since 2015.