By: Morgan Castaneda
The Middle Eastern Club is recognizing its first year on Redwood’s campus during the 2022-2023 school year to create a safe space for students to learn about their peers’ cultures.
The Middle Eastern Club is a new club on campus goaled towards sharing students’ different cultures and shedding light on the events happening in Middle Eastern countries.
Members bring bracelets, food, music, and other items that represent their cultures to share with one another during the club’s monthly meetings.
The club was started in the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year by the club’s co-Presidents, Sheila Soltani, ’23 and Donya Akhavon, ’23.
Photo courtesy of author, Castaneda
Soltani says that the club is the students “trying to represent the Middle East from the different areas like Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, and other countries surrounding them.”
Akhavon notes, too, that “it’s a place where both Middle Eastern people and non-Middle Eastern people can come together and exchange cultures.”
Akhavon mentions that unfortunately, “the Middle East is portrayed so badly in the media that a lot of the times there are stereotypes and untrue thoughts regarding the Middle East.”
By using the influence of similarly cultured students, both presidents founded the club hoping to create a safe environment for all kinds of different students across campus.
By creating the club, the students aimed towards creating a community for students to learn about foods, traditions, history, and more components of Middle Eastern culture while gathered together in a classroom setting.
Treasurer Aaron Yang, ’23 says that it is “a group of people coming together and sharing their stories and experiences and learning about their country.”
Vice President Sherry Mashael, ’23 says that since there is a lot of conflicts arising in Middle Eastern countries, the club is “a great way to educate people about [their] culture and show them what it’s really like.”
Mashael says that “one of [their] biggest goals is to get people of all ages at Redwood to come to [their] club and to just be able to feel like it’s a safe space for them to learn about other cultures.”
Member Ahmed Aziz, ’25 says his “favorite thing is just interacting with all the other Middle Eastern people and all the other people that want to learn about the Middle East.”
Photo courtesy of Akhavon
So far, the club has successfully created a space where members feel they are in a safe environment to be proud of their origin.
To stay updated on upcoming events and meetings for the Middle Eastern Club, follow @redwood.mec on Instagram.
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