By Staff
CASSOPOLIS - Minority Coalition student volunteers present "Color Me Human- A Day of Diversity" from 10:30 a.m. to 2:50 p.m. Friday, April 15, in Ross Beatty Junior-Senior High School auditorium.
RBHS students Derron Thomas, Monique Harris and Carmalita Peake will perform original compositions at noon.
From 10:30 to 11:30, Dr. Yan Searcy, Chicago State University assistant professor in the Department of Social Work and Sociology, will provide an interactive, non-confrontational, participatory discussion of race that will operationalize the term.
The goal is to clarify its meaning, identify similarities between groups, identify perspective differences and to ultimately celebrate culture and eliminate the endurance of race-based advantage.
Dr. Gottfried Oosterwal, Andrews University director of the Center for Intercultural Relations, from 12:15 to 1 p.m. will give the keynote address, "Diversity: Our Meal Ticket to the Twenty-First Century."
Objectives of this discussion will be to develop a greater awareness of and sensitivity to diversity - not as a biophysical phenomenon, but as a cultural reality rooted in people's different values, assumptions and perceptions of reality, and how this increasing diversity challenges our ways of relating to and doing business with people from other cultures now working and living in the community.
Featured from 1 to 1:25 p.m. will be Voices of Faith, a multi-cultural choir from the University of Notre Dame singing a cappella, gospel and uplifting songs from various ethnicities. Voices of Faith travel and perform throughout the country.
The day concludes from 1:25 to 2:50 with Vincenzo Carraso, Rhythm Works.
Rhythm Works is dedicated to exploring and teaching the connections between rhythm and such concepts as diversity, teamwork, peace, community, education and the joy of rhythm.
This presentation will use a variety of drums, representing a diversity of world traditions, leaving students with a better understanding of how rhythm and music connects us as a global community.