Diversity Appreciation

Diversity appreciation is not only important in our lives, but rather essential so we can understand each other easily; whether we were from different nations or only follow different believes. As of today, globalization has taken over the world and diversity appreciation is important as we should know who we are dealing with, so we do not offense anyone with a comment. Also, we get a better view on their backgrounds. Because we definitely are meeting people from different ethnic and religious groups everyday in our lives. 

The Staten Island community is a great example on diversity appreciation, especially after 9/11 as they got together and tried to diminish the tension between each other. This comes as the Mosaic Coalition was created, which is a campus-community partnership created by Wagner College and the New York Center for Interpersonal Development. They believed that they could start by having a dialogue within their community. There was high tension during the talks which included people from different backgrounds. However, after a while, they all went back as before and forgot about the hatred that was generated after the 9/11 attacks. Moreover, they created more and varied opportunities for people to explore and reflect on their differences. Such as giving some groups the opportunity to showcase their cultures at the free annual Celebrate Diversity! event. In which intercultural awareness should overcome ignorance and intolerance.  They also went to cultural centers, to temples, to mosques to get the community groups and their leaders to meet and tell them about this event, Celebrate Diversity! Some other things that they did and needed to do to make this event come true are: fundraising which the students of Wagner College helped in. The art and essay contest as the educators and school staff were also wanted to attend. Cooking project, documentary project and diversity engagement week, which included children's area, the marketplace, performances and most importantly, the food court. Finally, these were the things that the Staten Island community have done to reestablish the relationships between different ethnic groups and also to educate people about other cultures.

At Westminster College, we need to start appreciating diversity. We have all kinds of people in our campus, from the Far East to the far west including 67 countries and all different believes. Therefore, it is our duty to go out and explore these cultures while they are nearby before these students leave and we miss the chance of learning about new cultures. Some of this steps that we should take is to step out of our comfort zone and take the initiative to start talking to new people that we have not talked to before who have a different backgrounds than we do.