Diversity Potluck Dinner on Friday February 19th.
	More than 60 GFA parents, faculty, staff and board members gathered on Friday to share home-made dishes and six moving personal stories. Board member Lori Hashizume, who organized the evening, was a wonderful master of ceremonies. Speakers were: parents Hetty de Goeijen, Gary Miyashiro, Ram Acharya, Tiffany DeMartin, Sherron Velez and teacher Victor Llanque Zonta. It was a memorable evening. Thank you to all who participated. Excerpts from the speeches are below:

	Janet Hartwell, Head of School
	Welcome and thank you to Lori Hashizume and to the parents and members of the Diversity Committee who have planned and organized this. GFA has certainly evolved over the past several years and several events, and I think back to some of the early events and evenings, when we wondered if we would be able to fill a few tables, and then think about our most recent Heritage dinner where is was standing room only. Along with delicious and succulent food at Heritage dinners, we have showcased our students and their talents, and our community has celebrated our heritage, our differences, and our similarities. This evening's potluck dinner is another community event, but this time, bringing adults together to celebrate who we are, and give us an opportunity to hear adult voices, and adult perspectives from other countries and cultures, all of whom have come together to be part of this community. The world outside this school is a complicated place, and it is important for the adults to lead the way and be the examples for our children and students and show our understanding and acceptance our fellow human beings, and for all of us to be prepared to take on the identity of global citizens. I would like to offer you this prayer, written by the Indian poet and Nobel laureate Rabindra Nath Tagore. Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free; Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by the narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action- Into that heaven of freedom, my father, let my country awake.

	Sherron Velez
	"When I first visited GFA on a gorgeous sunny afternoon at an open house with my husband Jon and our two sons Jeffrey and Brandon, I was impressed with the rustic beauty of the building and overwhelmed with the prospect that private school could be a reality for our two sons---that they could actually walk through these hallways and be members of the GFA community. Jon and I have always worked---Jon has been working since he was 13, and I've worked since I was 16. We pay our taxes and are law abiding citizens; however, never in our wildest dreams did we think private school was attainable, especially in Westport." To read more CLICK HERE.

	Gary Miyashiro
	"I am a third generation AJA (American of Japanese Ancestry). We call ourselves “Sansei”. Actually I am a 3½ generation as both my maternal grandparents were born in the US, making them American citizens; they were “Nisei” and my mother was a “Sansei”. That’s an important fact, and I’ll get back to that later. I was born and grew up in Hawaii, on a small, mostly rural island called Kauai. In the school that I attended, children of Japanese ancestry made up the majority enrollment. In fact, in my community, Japanese made up the majority population. So in my experience growing up, America was Japanese and I pretty much took my Japanese heritage for granted. It wasn’t that racism and prejudice didn’t exist, but I never considered myself “different” or experienced real discrimination growing up. However, that all changed when I went away to college. I went to school in Boston, where I saw my first snow and the changing of the seasons. More importantly, coming East to New England was a cultural shock as I was now a minority, singled out as being different and often “looked down on” as being inferior. For my children, this is the world that they know and grew up in. In fact, for my older son, through most of his elementary school years in Redding, he was the only Asian child in the school. Growing up, we tried to instill in our children a pride in their Japanese heritage, that although they might be different, that in no way are they inferior."  To read more CLICK HERE.

	Ram Acharya
	"First of all I would like to thank the GFA Diversity Forum who organized this program, invited me and encouraged me to speak in front of this wonderful community. I have never been a good speaker, but how could I refuse when I was asked to be a part of this diverse and culture-mixing program? I will be talking about Nepal and my family’s journey to the United States. Nepal, the country that I was born in, is a beautiful country. It is the size of Iowa and is shaped like Tennessee, and is located in southern Asia, right in between India and China. Geographically and climate wise, it's a diverse country. It is not entirely cold in Nepal, as some speculation. It is cold in the northern part of the country, which is surrounded by the snow-covered Himalayan Mountains. However, the rest of the country is not that cold. The southern plain region of Nepal, which is called the Terai, is in fact very hot and humid. Nepal in general is a largely agricultural country. My parents, who live in the Terai region, are agricultural people, too. I grew up in their farm and got my early education in my hometown, Chitwan, which is a renowned place for single-horned rhinoceros and jungle safari." To read more CLICK HERE.

	Tiffany DeMartin
	A few weeks ago I was driving with my three year old down the Post Rd in Fairfield in the pouring rain - the kind of driving rain that hits your car so hard you can’t hear the radio, or a conversation, or see past the hood of your car, and your wipers are going as fast as they can but you still can’t see. That kind of rain. We were on our way to the Stop and Shop, and as we pulled around the roundabout down by the motel and the diner on the edge of town, we noticed a family standing on the curb. A mother, a son, four huge rolling suitcases and three dogs. Just standing there in this wild storm, and I said to Penelope “what a horrible thing to have to stand in the rain and wait for the bus like that.” And without giving it a second thought, I looked away from them and pulled into the Stop and Shop parking lot and drove around looking for a place to park. I couldn’t find a spot close enough to the door so we’d stay dry, so I abandoned the effort and figured I’d try another market closer to home, maybe we’d get luckier there. And as we came around that roundabout again, a good five minutes later, that family was still there. Only now they were gathering their things and starting to walk. We drove right past them, drove another hundred feet and then turned around. It took a while to get back in their direction, and by the time I pulled up to them they were ankle deep in a flooded street, stuck at a dangerous intersection, struggling with their dogs and their bags. I rolled down the window, “Do you need a ride?” I asked her. Click HERE to read more.

	Hetty deGoeijen
	A Dutch Journey. First of all some thoughts and comments we hear often in the US when people ask us what country we are from. We are from the Netherlands, also named Holland. Holland is an unofficial name, more a historical name. The Netherlands is the official name. Some comments we get are: *Do they really walk on wooden shoes? *Is Amsterdam close to the Netherlands (what do you think)? *Oh, Holland, that’s the capital of Sweden, isn’t it? *Holland? Oh, Holland, oh yes, they speak Hollisch!  To read more Click HERE.

	Victor Zonta
	"I would like to talk to you about my immigrant experience, not just in the US but also in Bolivia, where I originally come from. Yes, in a sense I was an immigrant in my own country, because being an immigrant is more than simply coming from another nation, having a foreign passport, or speaking another language. Immigrants are those of us who left what we called home behind, voluntarily or involuntarily, alone or as a group, and later tried to start our lives afresh in a new place. In some cases this move happens across national borders, while in others it takes place within the same city. For some, moving is easy, but for most of us adjusting to a new place is hard. Picture me, for instance, in my first day as a Spanish teacher here, trying to explain the word ''sonrojear'' to my students. I told them that ''sonrojear'' comes from the word ''rojo,'' which means red. ''Sonrojear es cuando tu cara se pone roja.'' They didn't get it, so I gave it away in English. "It means flushing,'' I said, ''you know, red face? Flushing…'' They seemed confused, some of them chuckled. Later Jason Cummings pulled me on the side at the end of class to deliver the bad news: ''I think you meant blushing.'' It was a glorious a start to my teaching career… "  To read more CLICK HERE.