Global Perspectives

Global Perspectives provides students a safe space to share personal experiences surrounding culture and diversity and encourage curiosity. They meet every other Tuesday at 8 a.m. over Zoom, and new members can join the club by emailing Lugo, junior and co-founder Zina Alsheklee or sponsor Debra Klevens.

What is the purpose of your club? 

“The purpose of Global Perspectives is that we wanted to provide a place where people could share about their cultures and we could foster open multicultural conversations about how it feels to be a cultural minority or come from a different country. It’s to share a perspective that others might not be exposed to in their day-to-day lives. I think at West, the majority tends to be white people who might not have that experience of constant interaction with people from around the world, and while a lot of people don’t necessarily get discriminated against, at least in my experience, I think it just gets ignored by teachers and students and we don’t have these conversations. We can’t have holistic conversations about the world around us until we have those conversations.”

What is your favorite part of your club?

“We do this thing at the beginning of each club meeting where we have one or two people share about their culture; they share where they’re from, what their culture is and what it means to them. I feel like in a geography or history class we might get a general idea of what a culture is in terms of beliefs and stuff, but by hearing what a culture means to someone, we can understand. Oftentimes, social justice clubs try to root out negativity, but this club is more positive in a time where we’re constantly talking about how minorities are put down or marginalized.”

Why would you love to have new members join your club?

“Every perspective matters and the more perspectives we get, the more understanding we become. I’m a big believer that we can’t change the world until we understand it, so I really want different perspectives to come in. That doesn’t just refer to people from different cultures and ethnicities, even just different people have different perspectives. Even people who might be white middle class, who have not traveled anywhere, who might think they don’t have anything to share, can gain perspective to share and expand their knowledge of the world and listen and enrich their own lives through learning and conversation.”