Global Bites, a new club fundraising with food-related small businesses, samples foods from different cuisines at monthly meetings to give students a stress-free environment to hang out and have fun.
Juniors Anaya Mayer and Prachi Chauhan began Global Bites to share their love for food with other students. As the presidents of the club, they both founded the club together and will work together to create agendas and talking points for meetings. The sponsor of Global Bites is English teacher Catherine Boswell, who provides her classroom for meetings, helps work through any problems and assists with planning.
Mayer and Chauhan’s goal for Global Bites is to encourage students to learn about different cultures through food and to relax from school. Mayer said she wants to ensure students are “just vibing.”
Global Bites meetings will occur in school and out of school. In-school meetings will be located in Boswell’s classroom, room 251, where students will discuss different cultures, determine what foods to try and learn about how food impacts culture.
Out of school meetings will take the form of potlucks, occurring in either Mayer’s or Chauhan’s houses. Club members will have the opportunity to bring in food from their culture and share its significance with other members. To take students’ allergies into consideration, students will be able to fill out a Google Form to list their allergies before meetings.
Mayer and Chauhan also plan to buy food from restaurants. To pay for event costs, they want to hold several fundraisers throughout the year to support their club and small businesses partners. Currently, Mayer and Chauhan are collaborating with their club sponsor to plan their first fundraisers, which they will market through Instagram and club meetings.
Mayer and Chauhan are also making slides, looking into different cuisines and searching for small businesses to partner with to prepare for the first meeting.
With Global Bites being a new club, Mayer and Chauhan are prioritizing attracting students’ attention through Instagram posts. Food also plays an important aspect of marketing to the student body. Mayer said that she thinks “the sole factor that there is food involved will encourage a lot of people to join the club.”
Numerous students, like junior Emma Ikeda, agree with this theory. Ikeda, who signed up for the club, along with 39 other students, said she thinks Global Bites is “a great way to learn the culinary cultures of other countries…and for students to connect with each other and with food.”
Food is an aspect of cultures that can tie people together. As students share important aspects of their cultures with one another, Mayer and Chauhan hope that this will create a closer bond within the Global Bites community. Boswell said that she thinks the club “will be a place where students can come together and discuss their culture and food and learn about other cultures. I think that it will be a very welcoming environment for all to join and feel welcome.”
