In any given breakout room, I would find myself with classmates from Bhutan, Canada, China, Egypt, Kenya, South Korea, Tajikistan, Tanzania, the UK, etc. The list goes on. And to think that we were all connected by the powers of a single Zoom room? Magic. Collaborating with peers from all over the world opened my eyes to how every student came from different walks of life. My experience at YYGS has confirmed my conviction that discussions about diversity shouldn’t be focused on how the lines of race, gender, and class divide us – it’s about how the intersections of our cultures give us unique perspectives that we can celebrate and utilize to shape our world.
Inspired by YYGS Social Science Program Manager Gaye Kim and his food history seminar, I wanted to explore how I could use the power of food to celebrate diversity and bring people together. As the Editor-In-Chief of our school’s World Languages magazine, Babel, I reached out to faculty advisors and affinity groups like the Black Leadership, Awareness, and Culture Club to pitch the idea of initiating a schoolwide cookbook to collect, preserve, and celebrate our community’s rich family traditions. I assembled a team of students and faculty who were also interested in this project, and together, we secured school funding, requested submissions from the school community, and designed the publication. I’m so thrilled that we managed to pull this off, and I hope this global cookbook can continue to be an annual publication even after I graduate from high school.