Riis Settlement’s Multicultural Festival has become a highly-anticipated community-wide event traditionally featuring an array of talented performances, creative art displays, cultural food and desserts, local vendors and more. This year our Senior Shakers stole the show with a Samba number and Ms. Brown, a parent of a Riis Academy-Ravenswood participant, shared an encouraging song. Art displays covered the gymnasium walls showcasing the work of our ethnically diverse and talented Riis Academy youth while local vendors set up on the gymnasium floor offered everything from snacks to artwork and handcrafted jewelry. The Multicultural Festival also marked the kickoff of registration for our second annual Riis Academy Read for Riis! Read-a-thon. This year, participants from kindergarten through 5th grade across four Riis Academy campuses are competing to read the most books and help raise funds for the organization. If you would like to sponsor our readers, click here.
The multicultural program featured photographs taken by participants in our elementary program during photography club. Their photos reflected their studies related to diversity and cultural differences. They also learned about the process of taking and editing photos. Our high school students explored diversity by researching their own family tree. Our youth asked their parents and grandparents simple questions like “where was I born?” and made discoveries that were sometimes surprising and helped them piece together the puzzle of their own identity. Many participants discovered they had Latino or West Indian heritage that they were unaware of. As each participant learned more about their ethnicity, they chose a national flag to represent themselves, took a self portrait with that flag and share a statement about what they learned. Other artwork celebrated the life of Nelson Mandela. Our renowned Senior Shakers, led by Ms. Marion Jeffries, wore black trousers, while blouses comfortable shoes and shimmery golden scarves as they samba-ed across the gym stage in formation. Catch a bit of their performance on youtube!
Riis Settlement is proud of the rich diversity among our participants and the community as a whole. This year’s festival was a delight for all the senses and gave everyone an opportunity to celebrate who they are.
