{"id":942,"date":"2013-08-28T13:50:08","date_gmt":"2013-08-28T13:50:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/?p=942"},"modified":"2013-08-29T12:45:33","modified_gmt":"2013-08-29T12:45:33","slug":"vbcps-middle-and-high-school-students-attend-seventh-annual-diversity-ambassadors-workshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/vbcps-middle-and-high-school-students-attend-seventh-annual-diversity-ambassadors-workshop\/","title":{"rendered":"VBCPS middle and high school students attend Seventh Annual Diversity Ambassadors Workshop"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Virginia Beach middle and high school students are stepping up to the plate to serve as Diversity Ambassadors in their schools. The Diversity Ambassador program, which is organized by the Office of Equity Affairs in collaboration with the Office of Student Activities, uses student leaders to encourage and empower young people to use their voice for positive change.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re bridging a gap that shouldn\u2019t be there,\u201d said senior Sydney Moondra, diversity ambassador at Bayside High School \u201cMy culture defines me. I have a strong Indian background instilled by my parents and I don\u2019t want to lose it. I am grasping onto my Indian heritage while embracing American culture.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_943\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-943\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/DAW-Facilitators_Advisors_73113.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-943\" alt=\"This year's Diversity Ambassadors Workshop (DAW) facilitators, advisors and other support personnel were on hand to help train and aid the new ambassadors. \" src=\"http:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/DAW-Facilitators_Advisors_73113-300x225.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/DAW-Facilitators_Advisors_73113-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/DAW-Facilitators_Advisors_73113-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/DAW-Facilitators_Advisors_73113-400x300.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/08\/DAW-Facilitators_Advisors_73113.jpg 1280w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-943\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">This year&#8217;s Diversity Ambassadors Workshop (DAW) facilitators, advisors and other support personnel were on hand to help train and aid the new ambassadors.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Recently, the middle and high school ambassadors attended a daylong diversity workshop at Virginia Wesleyan College.<\/p>\n<p>Students were greeted by Jobynia Caldwell, director of Equity Affairs.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;All of us are on a mission in this division to accept people, be tolerant of differences and like each other,\u201d Caldwell said to the students. \u201cConsider yourselves a family. This is how we do business here in Virginia Beach.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Following Caldwell\u2019s remarks, diversity ambassadors collaborated with students from other schools, dialogued about the dimensions of diversity and racial stereotyping, planned activities to open the lines of communication for all students and watched moving \u2018spoken word\u2019 performances from Teens With a Purpose, a Hampton Roads youth group, and Salem High School\u2019s Filipino American Cultural Society.<\/p>\n<p>Shally Pham, a rising senior at Salem, perhaps best summed up the training and mission of diversity ambassadors.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe should be able to function as one without being the same. We look at the trees for the branches and the flowers, but we shouldn\u2019t forget our roots.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Virginia Beach middle and high school students are stepping up to the plate to serve as Diversity Ambassadors in their schools. The Diversity Ambassador program, which is organized by the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-connections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":953,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942\/revisions\/953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vbcpsblogs.com\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}