Concord High School students will be showing off their various cultures tonight, Monday, May 14, at the annual International Night organized by the Be the Change Club.
The event will run from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. on Main Street and in the auditorium.
The Be the Change Club is a club for CHS students ”to unite and celebrate diversity and the diverse cultures throughout our school,” says junior Maggie Connolly. “Be The Change Club is about taking pride in what makes us unique individuals as opposed to seeing differences as a source of division.”
For the first part of International Night, there will be different kinds of foods from around the world served on Main Street. The second part will be people performing dances or other acts that represent their cultures.
Said Gordana Varagic, an ELL teacher who helped get the International Night tradition started at CHS,  “The fun part about performances is that you never know what people are going to perform and the food is really good.”
Anne-Marie DiPasquale, a social worker at Concord High School said that there will be “African dancers, Nepali dancers, Nepali singers, a boy playing guitar and singing a song from his country which is the Ukraine, an American trombonist, a girl who is playing the Ukuele and singing so we have lots of really interesting entertainment.”
“International Night is a great way for people from different cultures to celebrate their culture. “Culture brings us closer,” said Varagic.
“Culture is important to me because it is a crucial building block in shaping us into who we are,” Connolly explained. “In order to have peace in the world, we must be able to understand and accept differences between us. Just because someone practices something differently than you do or believes something you don’t, doesn’t make that person wrong or any less of a person. I think one of the best ways to create unity is to celebrate our differences and understand why they exist, which we can do by studying our diverse cultures here at Concord High School.”