I am new at this game and our school has a very diverse community. We have families that range from Russian to Hispanic just to name a few. The hispanic community is fairly involved, however the others are not. I would really like to make it my goal this year to figure out how to get the other communities involved. They sign up to attend an event but don't show up. Any suggestions?

Thank you for your ideas in advance.

Shelly

Hi, just a suggestion, but what about having some kind of ethnic family food night. Potluck dishes brought in by families, maybe with a place card with the country of origin on it, with the children's names/grades on it who brought it in. I think you would probably need some kind of commitment on this though, so you can be sure to have a decent turnout. I think if you could just get some famalies to come out, they will start getting involved in other areas too. In my experience it takes a lot of time to get new people involved, they start out small, then eventually move to bigger projects, then board positions, then into the never-ending black hole...just kidding. Good Luck.

Back in my working days, I worked for a Russian gentleman for many years. They have a wonderful culture and take tremedous pride in their children. The school would have the children perform at meetings and he would even let us go home early to watch our children! (I really miss working for him!) Anything to do with their children is huge! The only trouble I remember, the men and children had good English but often Mom and Grandparents English was poor. If they were not in the work force they learned very little.

My fondest memory from the office was the holiday season--every Friday we would have a HUGE potluck!
Since we had so many religions, we celebrated the month of December!! So much food!!!! So much fun!!! That was the best way we could all share our culture! I even learned a lot about my ethnic background as my great grandparents were from Bulgaria!