Selena St. Pierre is a junior attending Perkiomen Valley High School. She is the founder of the Culture Cafe event that happened on April 12th, and wants to use it to help promote a more diverse community for all.
“I created the cultural cafe because I wanted more community based things – I felt like we should have more events where we interact with the community outside the high school too. It’s a really diverse area that we live in, and I believe that the high school could do a better job of reflecting that. The original idea of the cafe came up because I became really interested in food, and how that bridges gaps and connects people. I also wanted to showcase visual media like art, but since the art department already has many events – I decided to combine it with the cultural cafe. I ended up asking students what cultural dish means something to them, and I took the results and did painting studies on them. I really liked doing the studies, and I think I am going to continue doing it until next year. I contacted a few restaurants in the area, and they agreed to donate food to the event. For our first time, we had Haitian, Italian, Mexican, and Thai food. Our community is already starting to be incredibly diverse, so I believe the cultural cafe is just another way to highlight that. We had some issues with planning, since as a first time event I was not sure if people would actually show up. We were also slower on advertising, just because I didn’t realize how far in advance I had to plan. However, I believe it was a success, since whenever I explained the concept to people they always seemed very interested. Next year I want to add more cultural dishes, along with having more options since not everyone can eat the same things. With the event, we helped raise over 600 dollars for Hope to Haiti – which I am very proud about!”