On Friday Oct. 14 during lunch, the Multicultural Festival Planning Committee will be hosting their first annual festival in the old gym. This committee consists of both students and staff at Pascack Valley.

Pascack Valley’s World Language, Music, and Family & Consumer Science Supervisor Noemi Rodriguez is head of the Multicultural Festival. Rodriguez said that the idea for the festival originated from a discussion in a Bilingual Advocacy Committee meeting this past spring. 

“[As a committee, we] talked about how we really wanted to celebrate all of the different cultures that we have here at Pascack Valley, so that’s what we’re hoping [the festival will be],” Rodriguez said. 

The goal of the festival is to represent less known cultures of PV by students and staff of the planning committee, added Junior and student leader of the Multicultural Festival, Vin Coglianese. 

The Multicultural Festival will begin at 11:30 a.m. in the old gym tomorrow.

Coglianese explained that there are going to be snacks, cultural outfits, trifolds with information, cook books, presentations, and picture books to educate students about different cultures.    

Coglianese has been helping Rodriguez plan the festival and the festival meetings.

Along with Coglianese and Rodriguez, the planning committee put together groups of tables in the old gym to represent more than 20 cultures. Some of these cultures include those from Puerto Rico, Ireland, Armenia, and Greece. 

There are 39 people helping plan and set up the festival. The French National Honor Society, Spanish National Honor Society, and Italian National Honor Society also helped plan the event. 

“[It’s] been really nice… from my end of everything, to see all of the different students who are stepping into these different leadership roles,” Rodriguez said. “I’m hoping that the students will look back on the experience and they’ll say ‘yeah, we’d really like to do that again.’”

Rodriguez aims to make this festival an annual tradition starting this year. Rodriguez added that she intends to make the next festival bigger and better and showcase even more cultures through the work of the members on the committee.