festival

Food, music, and the community come together for festival

By ASHLEY MEREDITH

Staff Writer

almeredi@ius.edu

The International Festival is having its annual gathering Tuesday, March 4, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the Hoosier Room of University Center North.

Tickets will be sold at the door and are $5 for students and seniors and $7 for non-students.

The proceeds from the festival will go to supporting Study Abroad Scholarships for IU Southeast.

“All the money goes right to the students,” Dr. Jean Abshire, associate professor of political science, said.

The three areas that the festival focuses on are cuisine, music and dance, and community organizations.

The menu is prepared by the IU Southeast conference and catering. This year it includes a vegetarian stew from Egypt, a banana, chicken, lime and rice dish from Barbados, and tres leche cake from Latin America.

Abshire chooses recipes that are diverse, but authentic to different regions around the world. She then collaborates with Lesley Stewart, food service coordinator, to get the dishes right.

“Lesley is absolutely intrepid,” Abshire said, “she does a fabulous job.”

For the music and dance portion of the festival there will be a Middle Eastern music group called Ahel El Nagam, a demonstration and lesson in Argentine Tango featuring dancers from Blair’s Ballroom, and the Kyene African Drummers and Moha Dosso, who is a stilt dancer from Cote d’Ivoire.

“I’ve seen video clips of the dancer, I haven’t seen him live, but I am excited to.” she said.

The final part of the festival is the local community organizations that interact and give information about their organizations.

“They’re coming to let people know what a really internationally diverse community we live,” she said, “we try to highlight that.”

Abshire said that the festival is one of the biggest events on campus and in the community that draws in hundreds every year.

“Because of the construction on the University Center last year our numbers dropped, but we expect around 400-500 people.”

With the money going to the Study Abroad Scholarships, students are able to extend their learning around the world.

In the last two years 31 scholarships have sent students to Ecuador, Germany, France, Greece, and various other countries.

“The students that go to Ecuador are from education and nursing programs,” she said’ “They actually go and teach at schools and work at the public health centers.”

There are more than 100 programs to cover every major or interest. The time spent ranges from a couple of weeks to a full academic year.

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