UN Day (Unity and Diversity Day)
UN Day Photograph in Annual National Pride Flag Walk (Taken by Gecko Net)
On October 20, 2023 OSC had its UN day. UN day, now commonly known as Unity and Diversity day is an annual event within the OSC community where our peers and teachers get together to embrace and exhibit their national pride. Walking into school that morning your eyes are met with a joyous festival of colors and traditional clothing from all around the world. The diversity is seriously astounding with the countless overstimulation of new scents and sights mixed in with traditional Sri Lankan activities.
SDG Goal 16 (UN Website)
My grade level and the COMUN members were combined and then split up into different groups to present the ideas of UN Day and its importance. I was partnered with Avin in my grade and Anneli from COMUN and we were given the task to present SDG Goal 16 to one of the two six grade classes. After being tasked with this seemingly impossible task to get 6th graders to pay attention to a presentation about Institutions on a friday before our one week October break. We decided and worked together to make a slideshow to present to the group (Slideshow shown as last image). After the presentation there were the games and my overall favorite part of the day which is the food stalls each nationality sets up. The polar opposite tastes were bewildering for my palate as Irish Stew and Phở were not the combination they were most accustomed to.
UN Day American Stall (Myself seen with Italian flag around my body, behind the flag) (Taken by GeckoNet)
The day came to a quick finish because of the early 12:30 dismissal, but the memories stayed longer; as UN Day with so many diverse cultures and backgrounds crammed into the small student body of OSC was a once in a lifetime opportunity that I would never have been able to experience at the local American Public School I attended growing up.
Sorry to backtrack, but my largest surprise about the day was the excitement and willingness the grade 6 class had to creating an institution. Seeing the different celebrities, or famous figures they would put in charge of their institution was not only amazing in seeing what they would come up with but also heavily interesting to see that so many kids thought the same way I had growing up. Adding lots of Videos and Interactive activities like Kahoots and Competitions where the groups of 6th graders would propose their institution’s laws, policies and values was a great way to end the first quarter of the year.
Slideshow Our Group Presented to the 6th Graders (Photo Credit: Dimath Ambalangodage)