Hart District decided to host their first ever culture fest at Valencia High School. The Culture fest occurred on September 18 to celebrate the diversity of the Santa Clarita students. They express their cultures by showing their different foods, music, and dance. This all started with the Valencia ASB Presidents Maya Yiadom and Maddox Espinosa. They were both ASB members and co-founder of the Filipino Culture Club, both 17, organized and coordinated with the students throughout the district since May. They would work these clubs with very few people and started working on the idea to bring these culture clubs to all schools in the valley. Both Maya and Maddox expressed the difficulty of making this event at a much larger scale. They said “it was a huge process, because at first we had to actually get other people, other representatives from every school, as opposed to this just being Valencia. It was also a lot harder because this is something during school, so everyone was already there, but for this, we had to get participants willing to bring food outside of school, and being willing to participate at this time of hour.” This is how hard it was to make an event for everyone so they could express and celebrate their culture and heritage.
There were already a few culture clubs at a few schools in which Valencia and Saugus had the Filipino culture club, the Black Student Union from Golden Valley and Valencia, and the Spanish Honor Society from schools across the district. This already helps the diversity of bringing this big event together. Maya said this about finally bringing this big event to reality: “It was really great working with Maddox. A lot of the time, it’s hard to plan events on your own, so I think that we both had an equal passion for the event, and we both really wanted to make this happen. So I’m really grateful that I had such an amazing partner to work with throughout this as well,” Maya said. “We’re really proud of everybody who came and showed up for this event, and we’re excited to see where it goes in coming years.” Maya and Maddox, only high school students, wanted people to celebrate their cultures and people to indulge into other cultures. Through hard work and dedication they brought that to Valencia High School where they celebrate with different types of food, dance, and music from different cultures around the world.
Saugus High school just has a Filipino culture club and a Spanish Honor Society, but should Saugus widen its horizons to new cultures across the world and have a similar event to what Valencia did on September 18, 2024 a International Culture Fest. A Freshman student from Saugus high who is already in the Filipino culture club Sean Trin has said that “I really enjoy the Filipino culture club and I’m really glad I joined. It helps me embrace my culture and its food. I think everyone should get to embrace their culture and I agree that Saugus should invest into making an event centered around celebrating different cultures.” Even students in culture clubs would think it is a good idea to invest in a culture fest to admire and indulge in other cultures. Should Saugus do a culture fest?
