Music, dance, food and presentations will be featured during the International Showcase on Feb. 15. The showcase kicks off the 10th annual Global Awareness Week, which will focus on diversity and harmony.
The purpose of the showcase is to promote intercultural understanding, according to event coordinator Yufeng Wang.
“(The showcase) helped enhance international understanding to help students get connected to other cultures … and prepare them for coping with for future success in an interconnected world and a globalized world,” Wang said.
In previous years the showcase has been held on Saturday, at the end of Global Awareness Week. This year the event will be held on Monday. Wang hopes that having the showcase at the beginning of Global Awareness Week will allow more students to be involved and participate.
The event will begin with a fashion and language show followed by music and dance from Africa, the Middle East and Europe, as well as martial arts from Eastern Asia.
“There is a lot of community involvement,” Wang said. “There will be cultural and international organizations present at Sinclair, like the International Peace Museum, the World Affairs and so forth.”
This is the 10th year for both the showcase and Global Awareness Week. Wang helped initiate the events in 2000 when she was chair of the International Education Committee.
“I felt that we needed to have a thematic celebration of international culture, like an annual event,” Wang said.
The event has been held every year since its conception. The first festival was promoted as “an opportunity for students, faculty, staff and community members to participate in a variety of cultural and academic activities aimed at world awareness and international understanding.” In its first year, international films and pictures were featured during the week, according to Wang.
“Now we focus on two (activities) basically, and that’s the issues—wonderful presentations during the week, and then we have the International Showcase with performances and cultural displays and food and so forth,” she said.
This year’s showcase will be held on Feb. 15 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the lower level of Building 8.