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Celebrating culture

Marshall High students to show off diversity with food, dances and artifacts

MARSHALL — Diversity will be celebrated in a variety of entertaining and educational ways at Cultures United Club’s Culture Fair on Friday at Marshall High School.

Everyone is welcome and attendance is free. Organizers encourage people to join in the fun and get a taste of different cultures.

“All the community is invited,” said Amina Ali, who serves as Cultures United president. “We’re going to show them that we still care about our culture even though we live in a western country. We still know where we came from, we appreciate it and we want to celebrate it. We want to share it with the world and community we live in, so they can learn more about us.”

Mulky Abdullahi, Cultures United secretary, said the event is especially meaningful because Marshall — and Marshall High School — is very diverse.

We’re providing different foods, dances, artifacts — a lot of things that come from different cultures — along with presentations and poetry,” Abdullahi said. “There’s a lot of stuff. A lot of our students put a lot of work into this.”

The Culture Fair will take place from 5-8 p.m. Friday in the MHS cafeteria.

“It’s going to be a lot of fun,” Ali said. “We’re having Hispanic culture. They’re going to be doing their culture. And there will be Somali, Karen, Thailand and Hmong.”

The student-driven event is likely to include many other cultures and heritages as well. Last year, more than 100 people turned out for the Culture Fair, which included booths and educational information about German, Indian, Bangladesh and Slovenian heritages in addition to Hispanic, Hmong, Karen and Somali cultures.

“We’re excited for this,” said Hsa Mu, a parent/student connector for Marshall Public Schools. “It should be a good time.”

While there is no cost for attendance, there is a price for the food. The organizers said many of the moms have been willing to prepare a diverse array of food for the event.

At the door, adults can pay $6 for a plate and then sample any or all of the food. Children or individuals 65 and older are asked to pay $4 for a plate. Advance tickets are $4 for adults and $2 for children 13 and under.

“We’re meeting and sharing how many tickets have been sold for the foods we’re going to do,” parent/student connector Fartun Ali said on Wednesday after school. “We’re trying to do updates from the kids, to see how many (advance) tickets we sold. We gave each (club member) 5 tickets to sell. Then when they needed more, they could get more tickets to sell.”

Cultures United members have been meeting every Wednesday for quite a few weeks. Fartun said some students from Business Professionals of America (BPA) are also helping plan and will take part in the Culture Fair.

“The Cultures United group meets every Wednesday,” she said. “Some BPA students are helping this year again, too. We also have some extra kids who are doing some dances and fashion. We will have practice (Wednesday) to show the dances and fashion parts of the program.”

With the last-minute plans being made and students practicing upcoming performances, the excitement level seems to rise.

“Everyone is excited, but a little bit nervous, too,” Ali said. “There were a lot of people and a lot of food last year. But we’re hoping to have even more attend than last year. We think it’s going to go great.”

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