SOHAR INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL CELEBRATES DIVERSITY
MUSCAT: ABQ Sohar international school recently held its annual Culture Carnival. The Carnival is a celebration of diversity amongst our students, staff and parents and is celebrated through music, dance, food and traditional dress. It has become an annual event that keeps getting bigger and bigger every year.
At ABQ SIS we have students from 36 different nationalities which make for a unique cultural melting pot. This provides us with a fantastic opportunity for students to learn from each other. Being a student in an international school with such an array of nationalities, a student can easily feel pressured to dispose of their cultural norms, behaviours, and traditions in order to fit in with the host country or the majority of the students. It is therefore important for our students to embrace and value their own culture and heritage. Our motto is ‘We Care’ and we show this by being respectful of all nationalities, cultures and religions. This allows our students to be proud of their heritage. Our teaching staff, being from 12 different nationalities, are very mindful of this factor and they lead the way by embracing our cultural differences, different food and the opportunity to learn from each other.
Each country then gets the opportunity to entertain the audience with a selection of songs and dances from their country. It is a feast of colour, music and dance. Something that we are very proud of is that every single child participated. It takes a lot of courage for a student to perform in front of a large contingent of parents and visitors and they performed exceptionally well, which is testament to the work that the teachers do on a daily basis with these students.
This celebration is not only focused on our own students but it also provides parents with the opportunity to collaborate with other families from the same country, as well as from other nationalities. After the performances, everyone got the opportunity to sample all the mouthwatering traditional dishes. As all the food items are either donated by the parents or the school, everything is free, which in turn highlights the spirit of giving which is so needed in this world. As mentioned earlier our Culture Carnival is not only focused on our own students and parents but we also invite local Nurseries to the event. Five local Nurseries with a total of 150 students and a number of parents joined us for this day and experienced what this day and the ABQ way is all about.
The Culture Carnival is a wonderful opportunity to plant the seed of multiculturalism and globalism where we can all live and work in harmony despite our cultural differences.