Spark’s fall festival on Nov. 19th drew plenty of attention with its booth, not only raising awareness for Native American heritage month, but also Domestic violence and LGBTQ history month. 

“We kind of brought all of that together by having community representation that could come into the school and highlight each of these issues,” Alyssa Moreno said, one of the coordinators for Spark and the festival itself. 

Spark is the equity club within Palatine, striving to make Palatine High School more of a place of acceptance and comfort for its students and staff.

“We really are an equity club that helps to bring about change with any topics that our members are passionate about,” Moreno said.

Moreno worked alongside Sarah Dyson and the students within Spark to create booths for not only making students aware, but providing students the resources they need to help or be helped.

“The idea is that it’s all student guided,” Dyson said on the topic of the festival “They put up all the displays. They’re the ones who brought in Wings to bring awareness of what they are.”

Wings is an organization that is dedicated to bringing awareness and support to victims of domestic abuse, and was brought in as a resource for awareness. One of the biggest draws of the festival, however, was the Native American dancer brought in for the festival.

“I would definitely say that my favorite thing was having the Native American dancer, and I know that is what a lot of other people were really interested in,” Moreno said. “Having an actual Native American dancer represent his community and his culture was great.”

Not only was the dancer present to raise awareness about Native American heritage month, but also to a booth dedicated to sending letters to Native American veterans.

“We probably had about 200 letters given to them,” Dyson said. “It was so nice to see how many students were excited and wanted to get involved.”

The Fall festival set up many booths to not only raise awareness to the many students of Palatine, but to give those same students resources for help or to be helped.

“[Students] can always contact me or Ms. Dyson in the English office and we can both get them the resources they need to help make some positive changes,” Moreno said. “Because we’re all about sparking change at our school and community.”

Spark meets every Friday at 7:30 AM in room 235, and are always looking for new students to bring new ideas for awareness and action.

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Suryanshu Bahadur

The Native American dancer helped bring attention to Native American heritage month.