International music concert concludes Del Norte’s Global Awareness Week

A multicultural vocal concert at Del Norte High on Friday evening will conclude the 4S Ranch campus’ Global Awareness Week activities.

The concert will feature choirs from Del Norte High School and Oak Valley Middle School plus a special guest, the Georgetown Day School Singers from Washington, D.C.

It will begin at 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 13 in the Del Norte High School Performing Arts Center, 16601 Nighthawk Lane in 4S Ranch. Tickets, sold at the door, are $8 for adults and $5 for students.

Del Norte Choir Director Keith Sattely said Georgetown’s director contacted him last fall asking if during its Southern California tour, the East Coast choir could perform with the Del Norte choir.

“Each group will perform separately and then combine at the end for ‘It Takes a Village,’” Sattely said.

As for other selections, they will include Japanese folk songs, Romanian dance tunes, Indigenous Amazonian tribal music, Aboriginal chants, Serbian folk dance songs, Angolan folk songs and folk songs from Brazil, France, South Africa and Cuba, he said.

“I am a huge advocate for collaboration in the arts,” Sattely said when asked why three choirs would be performing for the concert that also serves as the Del Norte choir’s first collaboration with the school’s Associated Student Body organization, which coordinated the week’s activities.

Del Norte’s annual Global Awareness Week kicked off on Monday when members of the campus’ UNICEF Club placed a water bottle in each classroom so throughout the week their peers could donate to the Tap for Water Project.

Tap for Water is a campaign to provide clean water and adequate sanitation to around 768 million people in more than 100 countries around the world, according to the project’s website at www.tap.unicefusa.org. The assistance comes in various forms, including water kits, water treatment products, portable toilets and hygiene kits.

On Tuesday, EcoFuture members spent part of their day sprucing up their campus by planting viola and marigold flowers in their campus quad, said Jennifer Mitchell, ASB adviser.

The Liberty in North Korea student organization showed a free screening of “The People’s Crisis” after school on Wednesday. It is a documentary that gives a comprehensive overview of life for the 24 million North Koreans living under what is “the most ruthless system of political oppression ever assembled by humankind,” according to the film’s description. Among things the citizens have faced are crippling poverty, humanitarian disasters, chronic food shortages and denial of basic freedoms.

The documentary features North Korean refugees who escaped and some of the grassroots changes happening inside the country.

On Wednesday and Thursday students also had an opportunity to taste foods from a variety of cultures during a club carnival. Among the 15 campus clubs that participated on Wednesday were Model United Nations and Hands for Honduras, while among the 16 on Thursday were the Vietnamese Student Association and Mitzvah Club, according to Mitchell.

“This year we are trying to focus on global issues,” Mitchell said of the week’s activities, instead of focusing on a specific topic, like cancer, in years past. “We’re trying to bring in a little of everything to expose students to a broader array of awareness and issues.”

She said holding Global Awareness Week also ties in with Del Norte’s mission, which is “Inspiring passion and preparing all students to be college ready, future focused and globally aware.”