Bringing Culture and Community to our Ignatian Global Scholars
The below project which is described is funded by the Rich Lauf Global Studies Grant through the World Affairs Council. The grant was awarded to five schools to encourage teachers, students and/or student organizations to develop and carry out a project that benefits your school or community related to the UN Global Goals. You can donate to the grant here.
St. Xavier’s Global X-plorers Club was founded as a part of the Ignatian Global Scholars program to provide students with more opportunities to learn about and engage with the world. Since its inception in the fall of 2021, the club has expanded to roughly 50 members, and it has gone through several iterations of meeting styles. Currently, club members will meet to research, discuss, and share about various aspects of a given country. Broken up into smaller groups, students will research the country’s history, education, art, music, current events, sports, celebrations, and humans’ rights just to name a few. The smaller groups will then upload a slide to an online Google Slideshow, which is then presented to the entire group at the end of each meeting. During the meeting, students enjoy samples of a selected dish from the country of choice. At the first meeting of the school year, students are asked to nominate a handful of countries that they wish to learn about. The club moderator, Mrs. Bower, will then choose the most nominated ones and base each meeting on one country most nominated. Over the years, we had researched countries like Norway, Pakistan, Syria, Iceland, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Kenya, El Salvador, and Mongolia, just to name a few.
Food has always been a big part of the club. We believe that sharing food together as a community is what brings cultures together and is how we bond as humans. When the club was first founded, there were only about 12-15 members at any given time. For each country we investigated, Mrs. Bower would make a dish from that country. As time went on, it became apparent that making food for 12-15 members was a lot more sustainable than making food for 50 members. To keep the food tradition alive, we had toyed with a few ideas, because we knew how important food was in bringing cultures and people together. With the Global Studies Grant, we have been able to keep this spirit of community alive by spending the grant money to cater various cultural dishes from local restaurants. SDG 11 calls for “protecting the world’s cultural and natural heritage”, and one of the suggested actions from SDG 11 is to “shop, eat, and drink locally.” We want students to recognize that Cincinnati is truly a cosmopolitan city filled with a richly diverse population.
By ordering food from global restaurants, not only are we exposing our members to the diversity of food, but also to the diversity of cultures in Cincinnati. Some of the foods that we have been able to bring in include pierogies from Ukraine/Poland; an assortment of Middle Eastern desserts; banh mi from Vietnam; chicken and jollof rice from Nigeria; shepherd’s pie from Ireland; empanadas from Venezuela; and pozole, guacamole, and hibiscus tea from Mexico. Along with catering food, we have also invited members of our St. X community with global backgrounds to bring their food and to share their stories and their countries. The Ignatian Global Scholars program invites students to deepen their awareness of their place and responsibility in an increasingly interconnected world, and we think the Global X-plorers Club has done a fantastic job of introducing students to global cultures to help them recognize that many of these global cultures reside in our local area. In the future, we hope to expand our attendee numbers and possibly co-operate with various other St. Xavier clubs to provide a wider reach of global education to our students and faculty. We are proud of what we have accomplished in only a few short years, and we are excited about what the future will bring!
