Our World School Holds Festival

The Our World Neighborhood Charter School (OWNCS) located in the heart of Astoria hosted their third annual Multicultural Festival on June 3 to celebrate the school's diversity. From 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. parents, teachers, administrators and students gathered to share food and history, watch performances and display their exotic currency or traditional dress. Participants sang Spanish songs, watched the glimmering traditional gowns, spun to the infectious sounds of drums, played an Italian history trivia game, listened to the Latin American beat, drank Persian tea and ate Irish soda bread. Neighbors were invited to celebrate the fact that they live in the most culturally diversified community in America.

Students were given an OWN Charter School passport and as they traveled from country (table) to country (table) looked at presentations their classmates made showing flag, the famous people who came from their native countries and sampled food and beverages. Parent ambassadors "stamped" the passports. Some put a sticker, some wrote "peace" or "hello" in their language under that country's name. Parents who committed to the event bore the cost, as the event is free to attend. The fundraising part of the event was the sale of raffle tickets, OWNCS multicultural cookbook containing over 100 of OWN parents' recipes and, of course, the extremely fashionable OWNCS tee-shirt, available in both youth and adult sizes.

Our World Neighborhood Charter School is situated at 36-12 35th Ave. between the Kaufman-Astoria Studios and the site of the future Frank Sinatra H.S. For more information call Lizanne Mobini at 347-776-9505.