About Us

Carassauga Festival is an incorporated non-profit volunteer community organization celebrating multiculturalism since 1986. Recognized as Canada’s largest multicultural Festival, Carassauga’s vision is to organize a city-wide family friendly multicultural festival suitable for all ages to promote understanding, respect and co-operation among all Canadians of different heritage.

Our Mission

– To provide an opportunity for Mississauga citizen groups from different countries of origin a chance to promote public awareness, appreciation and enjoyment of their cultures and cultural expressions.
– To promote principles of good citizenship, thereby encouraging tolerance, mutual cooperation and respect between and amongst Mississauga citizens.
– to encourage ethno-specific groups to cooperate together and to participate in mainstream cultural, civic and social activities.

Our History

Carassauga operated for the first time in 1986 with 10 Pavilions, initially operating only on Saturday and Sunday. It was created in response to a challenge put out by the former Mayor Hazel McCallion to all ethno cultural groups at a meeting of her calling in the old City Hall in the fall of 1985.

As a volunteer-based organization, our board is comprised of various members reflective of our cultural pavilions (providing community aspect and multicultural capacity) and from the wider community with special skill sets such as financial management, marketing, logistics planning, legal expertise and HR skills.

Carassauga Board of Directors 2021-2022

Carassauga Chair – Marek Ruta

Vice Chair – Resty del Rosario

Vice Chair, Pavilions & Programs – Laura Noray James

Vice Chair, Marketing – Randy Persaud

Treasurer – Sean Franklin

Secretary – Ursula Makula

Directors – Sunil Bungay, Hema Pereira, Zahid Abbas Syed, Sandra Pereira, Anna Fernandes, Cynthia Prazeres-Mare, Alice Kuziemka and Kreso Mitar

Past Chair – Jack A. Prazeres

If you are interested in applying to join the board, please email info@carassauga.com

Carassauga BY THE NUMBERS

• 1 – Largest Multicultural Festival in Canada
• 3 – Age of Carassauga’s youngest performer
• 4 – Number of original countries who have been with the Festival since its inception: Croatia, India, Philippines and Portugal
• 12 – Pavilion locations throughout Mississauga
• 20 – Hours (Festival)
• 21 – Stages with non-stop entertainment
• 29 – Number of Cultural Pavilions
• 35 – Years the Festival has been running
• 192 – Artisans
• 911 – Performances
• 4,315 – Performers
• 5,568 – Volunteers involved with the festival
• 228,025 – Hours of time dedicated by all the volunteers
• 370,250 – Number of visits recorded