My first step was reaching out to the Iranian community in and around New Haven, including the Foundation of Iranians in Connecticut and the Council on Middle East Studies at Yale. From them I was connected to a network of Iranian-Americans in our area who suggested stores to purchase supplies from, other organizations to contact, and unanimously thanked me for organizing such a program at the library. The Council even offered a donation to fund entertainment for the celebration. After looking in to a wide variety of storytellers, musicians, and folk dancers we decided to reach out to the local Middle Eastern Dance Academy of CT. We arranged for them to bring their kids' team of bellydance performers to do a demonstration of traditional Middle Eastern Dances and also teach some to the families in attendance. I loved this option because it gave money back to the local community and seeing children perform would be inspirational to the children in attendance. Though there isn't a specific tradition of belly dancing in Iran, the Council and a number of others I consulted agreed that this would be an appropriate element to our celebration.
The main element of the Nowruz celebration that I presented was the Sofra-ye Haft Sin table featuring seven symbolic items that begin with the Persian letter "sin". I made a dozen wrapped eggs using some craft eggs from Michaels, I used a hair dryer to shrink the wraps on, I purchased wraps similar to these. I believe I have a publisher file with all the labels and other informational posters I created, I will add more details here when I can convert it at work. One of the posters contained a wide variety of the different spellings for Nowruz, which is true across the board for many of the item names, transliterations differ. My research combined web and book resources and I checked with my community contacts as I planned to make sure I was respecting traditions. One big plan ahead item- sprout your lentils about a month ahead for the lentil Sabzeh.
We also had some Iranian snacks and a simple craft decorating a cut out egg shape, including some books about Persian art motifs on hand to use as inspiration. I think I got a lot of the snacks from The Persian Bazzar, I know I had chickpea cookies, baklava, and samanu (a type of of wheat pudding). I was also able to find some food items from specialty stores near Hartford.