After a busy May, the Wilton High School Asian Alliance will host the second annual Asian Alliance Festival open to all town members from 3:30-4:30 p.m. at Comstock Community Center on Thursday, June 13.
Last year, the Asian Alliance Club successfully put together a cultural festival that highlighted some of the Asian cultures that are part of the Wilton community. Students managed stations that showed off calligraphy, food, anime, origami, dance, and music, and shared bits of Asian tradition with those who stopped by.
During the Festival last year, visitors learned how to write their names in Japanese calligraphy, tried samosas and dumplings, learned traditional Bollywood dance, and watched clips from various Asian movie industries.
Sayuki Layne and Saniya Shah, leaders of the Asian Alliance Club, said they found it “tricky” to organize the festival this year, with crowded senior-year schedules and budget cuts to most high school clubs.
“As we are leaders for many clubs in the Wilton High School (including Wilton Debate, Model Congress, Student Government, and more), organizing events and encouraging student involvement while maintaining our personal school work and college applications was more difficult. Due to the lack of funds, most events are either no longer feasible or must be paid for by the students,” they wrote in a submission to GOOD Morning Wilton. “Additionally, clubs meet for half the time compared to last year, resulting in wilting student involvement. This puts pressure on student leadership as we try to run clubs.”
The duo said that while most of the high school clubs “trudged through this year,” it the cultural clubs such like Asian Alliance especially struggled. “We were only able to meet about once a month, making it tricky for even the most dedicated members to attend regularly,” they wrote.
Despite the lack of meetings, the club members were determined to make this Festival happen, even though Asian-American and Pacific Islander Heritage month was in May.
“Spreading and celebrating Asian culture, what we love most about our heritage, was the inception of the club. We want to continue to do this, despite obstacles. As they say, better late than never,” Layne and Shah wrote.
They said they love to share with the wider community as a positive way for people to connect with the rest of the world and open up perspectives.
“These opportunities introduced [visitors to lasts year’s festival] to unique customs from places across the world. It showed them something beautiful by teaching them something new — a beauty in a new horizon,” they added.
They hope residents will visit the festival this year.
“In the state of the world we live in right now, getting in touch with different cultures brings us together. This is our goal with the Asian Alliance Festival. [We hope people will] join us in the light-hearted, fun, special event this week,” they wrote.