Muslim student association hosts a second multicultural food day this school year featuring all heritage clubs

Katelin Williams
eSomethin Staff

For the second time this year, MSA hosted the PHS Multicultural food meeting that took place in the Aux Gym April 18, 2024. The gym hosted a wide variety of foods and beverages around the world. It was amazing to see all the different dishes and the talent and culture behind them. The dishes I had were absolutely amazing and delicious.

Not only were participants able to partake in the wide variety of delicious foods and drinks, they were also able to learn a bit more about everyone’s cultures during the event. It’s extremely important for cultures to be learned and appreciated, as they hold so much prominence and history. It’s an amazing thing for students to be able to get together to learn about and appreciate cultures they may not even have known much about.

Patrick Chen, president of the Asian American Club Association, stated, “In the 13-21 age range, your ideas are unfortunately set in place a lot of times. Their ideas are hard to change after that. Knowing this, I think it’s a worthy cause to try to push the young people’s boundaries in any way possible; even if it’s something as trivial as eating a samosa to going on exploring a new country.”

Taqwa Arif, president of the MSA club, said, “A person’s culture is their very own special story. It’s a part of themselves that can never be completely torn from them, even if they may be disconnected from it geographically within their environment, or if there are some elements of it that they resonate with more than others. Your culture will always be like your own home. Your roots, and you will always return to it.”

Riya Patel, president of the Indian Heritage club, says, “I think it’s important for young people to be connected in some way shape or form to their culture because to me. It’s the history of your ancestors and I think traditions and history should be shared and passed down.”

Aiden Owens, president of Afro-American club, says, “Sharing culture allows people to understand one and another and provide information on backgrounds to better understand where each of us came from.”

Many more people attended this event than the last, which allowed for the event to move into the auxiliary gym for more space. Though there was a bit of chaos in the preparation, everyone was able to leave satisfied and full.

“Each food day brings its own chaos in both planning and during the event as we manage having enough room to get everyone seated, properly labeling dishes with premade labels containing dish names, countries, and allergies/dietary information during set-up, and we always inevitably run out of plates halfway until we miraculously find more” said Arif.

“Events such as the food day, help to dispel a lot of misunderstanding, stereotypes, racism, etc. towards different cultures. Unique moment for the school to come together on unique and different events” said Chen.

“I’m so pleased with how this food day went, and I believe it was our most successful and largest one yet. This was the 3rd multicultural food day hosted by the MSA” said Arif.

“My club made a little bit too much, but I am glad everyone was able to have some. I loved when people came back for seconds and genuinely loved the food” said Patel.

“It allows people to keep their culture and grow with it in order to pass it on to a future generation. I think the whole event was a success. I think we should do this once or twice every school year to really bring people together” said Owens.