Looking Back at Taste of India with Hycinth Gomez
On June 9th, 2024, H2O4ALL’s annual Taste of India fundraiser took place in Oakville, Ontario. H2O4ALL supporters across the Toronto area enjoyed a dinner of classic Indian dishes, as well as an evening livestream featuring updates from our ongoing projects in Cuba. All proceeds from the event went towards the maintenance of our safe water systems in Cuba, as well as our upcoming safe water projects in Santa Clara, Cuba this November.
As always, the Taste of India fundraiser was a busy affair. Since it began more than a decade ago, the event has grown to more than a hundred people in the Toronto area enjoying the several courses of traditional Indian food. Volunteers from the neighbourhood came together to make the event possible, led by head chef Hycinth Gomez.
A Montessori teacher and mother of one, Hycinth and her passion for cooking are at the heart of the Taste of India event. Years ago, she met an H2O4ALL board member while working as a math tutor and took an interest in H2O4ALL’s mission of sustainable safe water access. “The water thing hits home for me because I grew up in India.” she says, “When I look back, we were very poor… I wanted to use my skillset to help people. When the opportunity came along, all this made sense to me.” Soon afterward she met cofounder Tim Muttoo and decided to use her love of cooking to make a difference. The first Taste of India fundraiser took place later that year.
Hycinth attributes the success of the fundraiser to her community. While she prefers to work alone in the kitchen, her husband, son, and neighbors all pitch in to make the event possible. The hardest part of the fundraiser for her is organizing a large group of volunteers, she claims. However, the community Taste of India has created is indispensable in keeping the event running for over a decade.
“We do it as a team.” she says. “It’s a family event… my son and my neighbours’ kids, they’ve grown up doing it. I think if you want to run an event like this one, you really need a good support system.”
It’s this community, especially the young people who have grown up participating in Taste of India, that Hycinth hopes will continue making an impact in the future. “For me now the goal is to rope in the younger generation. I don’t want this to go away, and I’m looking for an opportunity to back the younger generation in creating something like this.”
Thanks to Hycinth Gomez for interviewing with us. To see this year’s Taste of India fundraiser, click the link below.
