Ali Luciani, arts & living editor

Next week is Solidarity Week, an annual succession of events hosted by Center for Good Neighbor Culture and Community Engagement (CGNCCE). The purpose of the week long occasion is to bring students together through a variety of events focused on belonging and community to follow the theme of unity.

The week will include speakers, panels, performances, art, a fashion show, an interfaith gathering and opportunities for students to participate in hands-on activities. Organizers hope the variety of events will give students different ways to engage with the Berry community while exploring how people with different backgrounds and perspectives can come together.

Sophomore Samuel Sandoval-Reyes and programming lead for the CGNCCE has helped lead student planning for this year’s Solidarity Week. Sandoval-Reyes took on the programming lead position after being recommended by last year’s programming lead, Mikell Patterson.

For Sandoval-Reyes, the week is centered on creating a sense of community among Berry students.

“Solidarity Week is just a week of community and belonging and making sure that everyone here on campus has a place to go to and everyone feels like they belong somewhere,” Sandoval-Reyes said. “In other words, Solidarity Week is [about] coming together in unity and coming together as a community, as a Berry community.”

According to Sandoval-Reyes, Solidarity Week follows a selection of themes, with organizers selecting a more specific topic to focus on. As programming lead, Sandoval-Reyes helped shape this year’s Solidarity Week around the theme of unity.

“For Solidarity Week, we have a recurring cycle of different themes that we kind of have to choose from, and from those themes we kind of select or try to come up with smaller themes in a way,” Sandoval-Reyes said. “I think this year’s was somewhere in community and togetherness.”

Jon Hershey, director of CGNCCE, works with the college to promote Good Neighbor activities and events and make sure community remains an important part of campus.

Hershey said the student team handled most of the activity planning for Solidarity Week. 

“The student team has done the vast majority of the planning and work for Solidarity Week and that will be true as the week happens,” Hershey said. “My job mainly has been to answer questions, help solve issues that come up that they are unable to resolve themselves, I’m kind of a standby person as needed.”

Hershey said that the student team came to the conclusion of unity as the theme for this year’s Solidarity Week because they focused on togetherness.

“It is a student-run and student-focused week-long event that helps bring students together,  gives them an opportunity to explore concerns and issues that are important to them and to really come together as a group,” Hershey said. “That’s one of the reasons I think that the students decided that unity would be a good theme for this year’s Solidarity Week.”

While unity is this year’s theme, the week will approach the theme of unity from several perspectives for students to connect with one another.

Devon Smyth, Director of CGNCCE, works with students to plan Solidarity Week. Smyth said this year’s schedule was intentionally designed to provide a variety of opportunities for students.

“We would love for [students] to embrace the concept of unity and Good Neighbor Culture throughout the rest of the year and beyond” Jon Hershey

“There’s just a wide variety of unity across disabilities or differing abilities, unity across our faith traditions, unity across the arts,” Smyth said.

The week will include a keynote speaker on Monday, followed by a speaker on Tuesday through the Center for Personal and Professional Development. A candlelight event will provide an opportunity for students to gather around their faith traditions, while a nonprofit symposium later in the week will bring local nonprofit organizations to campus.

The schedule includes a fashion show, an art show and Paralympic speaker and wheelchair racer, Kreek Tabard.

Smyth said the variety is intended to demonstrate that members of the Berry community may have different ways to express themselves while still being connected to one another.

“We’re hoping folks will see that even though we might express ourselves differently, we really are together in who we are,” Smyth said.

Sandoval-Reyes is particularly looking forward to hearing this year’s keynote speaker, Ernesto Mejia, a first-generation Mexican-American motivational speaker.

“I’m super excited to for us to host Ernesto Mejia,” Sandoval-Reyes said. “He’s actually our first Latino speaker for Solidarity Week that we’ve had, so I’m super excited for him to come.”

Sandoval-Reyes highlighted the week block party as an event he believes will represent the community aspect of  the week.

“I’m very excited for the block party,” Sandoval-Reyes said. “I think that block party truly does kind of show the light in the community that we have here at Berry.”

Students can  earn up to 10 CE credits throughout the week. Information about upcoming events and chances for student participation is available through tabling in Krannert’s  main lobby.

Students will be able to attend events based on topics that interest them and find ways to volunteer through QR codes and sign-up opportunities found on flyers across campus.

The emphasis on participation is reflected in the structure of some of the week’s programming. The organizers also want students to participate rather than simply listen to speakers.

Hershey said the student planning team believed that hands-on activities could make the events more meaningful for students than traditional lectures. Because students already have busy schedules, Hershey said the team wanted to create events that could leave a longer-lasting impression.

“Every week, there are so many things going on, all kinds of things that it can be overwhelming,” Hershey said. “I think our student team felt that the impact of those panels and events might have a longer-lasting effect if we approach them with a little more hands-on activity, a little more involvement from    the audience.”

Sandoval-Reyes said the activities are more engaging than lectures.

“I think with having hands-on [activities], people are more engaged, and students are more engaged to know a little bit and learn,  like hands-on,” Sandoval-Reyes said.

The goal of that involvement is not only to increase attendance during Solidarity Week, but also to encourage students to continue thinking about unity and community after the week ends.

“Well, we would love for [students] to embrace the concept of unity and Good Neighbor Culture throughout the rest of the year and beyond the year” Hershey said. “So, I think that’s kind of our, or at least my, ultimate goal for the week.”

The CGNCCE will continue offering events throughout the academic year that reinforce those ideas. Hershey also pointed to Beloved Week in January as another opportunity for students to explore similar concepts while adding an emphasis on service.

For Sandoval-Reyes, the end of Solidarity Week should be a time for students to reflect on the connections they made during the events.

Solidarity Week is more than a collection of events on the campus calendar. The week gives students opportunities to participate, learn from one another and consider how unity can continue to shape Berry. “After the week ends, I think it’s just a time of reflection and we all come together,” Sandoval-Reyes said. “You know just reflect on what we did, what went on, what went wrong and kind of learn from those mistakes.”