In January, the Japanese National Honor Society, Spanish Honor Society, French Honor Society, and Art Honor Society gathered at the Shaler North Hills Library for the Around the World Event to showcase different cultures.
Senior Bella Minyo is the student who mainly hosted the event. She was working at the Shaler North Hills Library as the project coordinator and planned out the event over the summer with permission from the director.
“She told me that I’d have the opportunity to coordinate my own event if I wanted to,” she said.
Minyo, being the president of the Japanese National Honor Society, figured that she could do a community outreach event that would revolve around the Shaler North Hills Library.
Minyo noticed how special it made the Japanese community feel, and gained the idea to let the other language classes be part of the event.
“It would be a good look for the Japanese program. And I was like, ‘well, what if I bring like the other honors societies to make it like a bigger event?’” she said. “I thought it would kind of build on itself from what I originally wanted, like a very culturally-based learning event.”
The idea worked flawlessly, and all kinds of language groups showed up to be part of the event. The French Honor Society, the Spanish Honor Society, and the Japanese Honor society all showed up for the event.
Minyo would host different activities for each culture at their own table. She had them set up different foods or different activities that the other cultures would not have, so every table was very different from one another.
Minyo made sure that every table was suited with special treats and games for little ones too.
“They would engage in the activities with the kids and like the kids’ parents, and stuff like that,” she said.
One of the activities that all the Honor societies and the community collaborated on was to create a mural to show how each culture was entirely different from the other, while still showing how they are all also intertwined at the end.
Minyo wanted to make sure that each kid who participated could be represented on the mural, so she let them color over it and create fun pictures.
“If you look at the left side of the mural, you can see little drawings that some kids made. I wanted to make sure that people looking at the mural would notice the different age groups that worked on it.”
The mural now hangs in the World Language hallway at SAHS to remember the way community and the Japanese, Spanish, and French language programs came together at this event.
The event was very successful and managed to attract many different types of people. It served as a great symbol displaying how cultures can be different and yet very similar.
