Festival celebrates community diversity

The 16th annual Unity in the Community, the largest multicultural celebration in the Inland Northwest, took place on Saturday, at Riverfront Park. The event  is intended to encourage the Spokane community to come together and celebrate diversity.

The theme "2010 Ways to Celebrate Diversity" was represented in nearly 100 booths and 19 performances.

The event included a cultural village, a job fair, education fair, health fair and song and dance performances on the main stage located near the Spokane Clock Tower.  School supplies and bicycle helmets were also raffled off throughout the day.

"Even though we don't have a lot of diversity in Spokane, I think it's growing," said Cherie Dean, Providence Cancer Center representative and volunteer. "We need to encourage this."

The cultural village featured many places around the world, including Hawaii, the Philippines, Germany and Tonga. Each table had instruments, pictures, and even costumes from their native countries.

"It's nice to talk about where I'm from," said a volunteer originally from Pearl City, Hawaii.

The job and education fair featured local companies and businesses, political advocates and local colleges and universities. This included Avista, Habitat for Humanity, Costco, Washington State University, SpokAnimal and the Spokane Police Department.

Gonzaga University, a gold sponsor of Unity in the Community, had two booths at the event: one at the education fair and another in the cultural village.

"Gonzaga is one of the largest entities that brings diversity to Spokane," said Kurt Heimbigner, director of Marketing Services. "That's why we feel this is an          important event."

According to Heimbigner, 18 percent of the incoming class are minority students, with Gonzaga being 13 percent minority overall. Despite being a Jesuit university, more than 25 religions are represented in the student population.

Students from Gonzaga's International Student program were stationed in the cultural village.

 "People don't realize we have such a diverse program at Gonzaga," said ESL program coordinator Melissa Heid.

The international students gave away bookmarks with children's names written in their native languages. The languages represented were Spanish, Japanese, Thai, Korean, Chinese and Arabic.

This was the second year that they have done this activity at Unity in the Community.

"I get to work with people from all over the world," Heid said. "Where else in Spokane can you do that?"

According to the event website, Unity in the Community began in 1995 and was originally hosted in Liberty Park. However, because of its success and ever growing popularity, the committee decided to move it to Riverfront Park.