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Welcome to the first episode of the People Helping People Podcast, where we're going to talk to people involved in social change, developing cultural ties, and cool projects that are making a difference.For this first episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Mikela Thomas, the diversity liaison at Cheshire Elementary School, about culture and diversity. The Olentangy school district in Ohio has a diversity liaison for each school – and she has used her position to put together an impressive annual cultural festival.She shared her story – how and why she developed the program in her school, how she moved around growing up and experienced diversity in her own life and shared stories how diversity has affected students in her school – and how they’ve been able to break down barriers.From my experience, diversity and travel go hand in hand. The more we learn about culture by interacting with people and opening up and sharing our stories, the more accepting and tolerant we become. It’s the first step to combatting xenophobia and developing stronger ties around the world, which in turn leads to more peaceful relationships and people working together in collaboration.Read Full TranscriptAdam: And today we are going to talk about diversity and culture. Kayla has and the cultural liaison in Cheshire elementary school and three years ago she started a cultural festival to celebrate culture and diversity in the school. So we're going to talk about how she came up with this a little bit about what she's found in diversity and how she's helped spread awareness, help children understand that their diversity is okay and overcome cultural barriers.[00:00:41] You started this three years ago.[00:00:42] Mikela: Yes.[00:00:43] Adam: What was the inspiration for that?[00:00:45] Mikela: So, um, our district actually is just trying to build that inclusive climate, that culture of community. So we actually have diversity liaison supposition that was created and in every single building. So I believe we have 2324 schools in our district and every single building, elementary, all the way up to high school has a diversity liaison in that position.[00:01:09] And at that school. And so basically I took on that role. I was like, you know, being the only African American teacher at the school, actually there's only two minority teachers in the whole building. Oh, wow. You know, I just wanted to make sure to bring that awareness of diversity here. As soon as I found out that that was like a position that was coming up and I was like, Oh, I'm on it.[00:01:30] And there was no[00:01:31] Adam: position.[00:01:32] Mikela: So, so as a diversity liaison, we are responsible for providing professional development to the staff about identity inclusion, awareness, you know, different things. We also have a student diversity group, and so my diversity group was called the wild cards because our school theme is wondering, imagining learning, discovering which stands.[00:01:51] That's our wild. And the card stands for children, advocates, respecting differences. And so I teach the kids that if you're a wild car, like in the game, you know, have that car that has all the colors on it and it's a wild card. It just changes the whole game, changes everything. So I wanted them to feel like empowering them to be an advocate and making changes in our world if they see injustices and things like that.[00:02:13] So our club meets twice a month. So far this year we've done so much. We had a student come in and he has type one diabetes and he did a whole presentation on what that is, and he's still a normal kid like everyone else, but there's some extra steps he has to go through to prepare for the day and, but it just empowered him because now people aren't like, well, where are you going?[00:02:32] Why do you have to keep going to the nurse? You know, like can
