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This year, organizers are allowing smaller pavilions to make room for more groups. While they won’t be able to serve food, they will still be able to showcase their cultures.

“We are hoping in the years to come, if we do well with some of these newer, smaller pavilions, we could get up to 70, 80 or 90,” Gibbon said.

The pavilion for the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers pavilion will host five mini-pavilions inside, welcoming representatives from Barbados, Togo, Syria, Burundi and Mali.

New to the festival will be pavilions representing Liberia and Puerto Rico, while pavilions from Somalia, Mexico, Spain, Uganda and Tanzania return.

Tracy DesLaurier, president of the Edmonton Heritage Festival Association, said celebrating the vibrancy of our cultural diversity is important in light of recent world events that serve to divide people across cultural lines.

“It’s a great opportunity, given current world events, for people to understand each other better and experience others food, dance and customs,” said DesLaurier.

The event is also the single largest donation drive for the Edmonton Food Bank.

Marjorie Bencz, executive director of the food bank, said this year’s donation drive is especially important as increased demand combined with donor fatigue has created a “perfect storm.”

Festivalgoers are asked to bring donations of non-perishable food items to the park. Volunteers will also collect cash donations at festival entrances.

Unused food tickets can be donated to the food bank as you exit the park and will be redeemed for their cash value.

The festival kicks off at noon Saturday with a festival-wide singing of O Canada. Each pavilion will tune in to World FM at noon and film themselves singing along in their native language. Their videos will then be submitted and mixed into one video that will be played as part of Canada’s 150th anniversary celebrations next year.

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