LYNN — They have spent months organizing and preparing and on Friday from 6-8 p.m., Carlos Prudencio and fellow Class of 2021 members will celebrate food, music and fun from more than a dozen nations at English High School.
Invitations to the Goodridge Street school’s multicultural festival aren’t limited to students and faculty. Everyone is invited to what Prudencio hopes will be “a great night for the community.”
“We were pondering how to come up with a great idea for the class and we said, ‘We have so many diverse groups,'” Prudencio said.
Junior class members began planning the festival last November and class advisor Mike Haddad said Prudencio visited local restaurants and asked proprietors for gift certificates to be raffled off Friday night.
Haddad said Prudencio approached him earlier in the school year to discuss organizing the festival. An initial idea focused on English’s Spanish-speaking student population expanded into a celebration encompassing the entire school.
“I’ve never seen an event like this. It’s a great opportunity for the community to celebrate,” Haddad said.
The Lynn Public School’s 2018 Fast Facts brochure details the school system’s global representation with 42 languages spoken in the schools and students from 93 countries of origin.
According to the brochure, 60.3 percent of public school students are Hispanic; 9.6 percent African-American; 8.9 percent Asian; 0.3 percent Native American; 17.3 percent white and 3.6 percent multi-race non-Hispanic.
Haddad, who shares junior class advising duties with Erik Hellmer, said Prudencio and fellow juniors as of Wednesday organized a dozen tables devoted to specific countries and cultures, including Haiti, Honduras, Vietnam, Dominican Republic, Cambodia, Lebanon and Sweden — the last two Haddad’s and Hellmer’s nations of origin respectively.
Haddad credited Prudencio for his leadership in organizing the festival.
“I’ve known Carlos since his freshman year. He is one of the most amazing young men I have been fortunate enough to meet in 17 years of teaching,” Haddad said.
