Community service and charitable giving are big components of Parker’s mission as a school. From the Parker Partners community service in the Middle School to the money being raised for charities in Student Government, Parker gives back to outside communities. Many of the clubs in the Upper School spend their time meeting to discuss how they can work to help outside of the school. 

The Asian Alliance is an Upper School affinity group that meets weekly. The club focuses on bringing Asian-indentifying students together to discuss topics and themes related to their heritage. They discuss issues regarding the Asian community at Parker, in Chicago, and all over the world. 

“It’s a place for students who are Asian or Asian-American to come together, to share their cultural heritage, and to share their personal experiences with their cultural heritage,” Upper School Science Teacher and Asain Alliance Faculty Advisor, Xiao Zhang said. “Also, to find ways to share with the larger community.”

On Friday, November 22, in the Sheridan Cafe, the Asian Alliance will host a potluck. The event will include a raffle for a gift-certificate to an Asian restaurant. 

There will be music and possibly a movie as well. The entire time is meant to serve as a social hour. There will be catered food, people will bring food from home, and some food might even be made on site. The potluck’s purpose is to raise money for Smile Train. 

Every year, over 200,000 children with cleft palates are born around the world. Smile Train is an American nonprofit organization that provides cleft palate surgeries for children. Smile Train provides free cleft palate surgery for children in 87 countries, including countries in East Asia. 

“The group of students who started the Asian Alliance made Smile Train a component of their club charter,” Zhang said. “They raised a lot of money last year so we are hoping to successfully continue our work with Smile Train this year. One of the students also had raised funds for the organization before and she wanted to continue to raise more funds for the organization, and everyone was on board.”

“We thought that an organization that helps children would be a really good organization to stick with,” sophomore and chair of the Asian Alliance Aydin Young said.

Cleft palate is a common birth condition that causes a baby’s upper lip to seem as it’s attached to the bottom of their nose. There is a long hole in the roof of their mouth that stretches all the way to the top of their upper lip. In order to fix this birth condition, surgery has to be performed, but some families in East Asia don’t have the money to provide this surgery for their children. The potluck will be raising money to help these children get the surgery needed. The Smile Train slogan is, “Give every child the chance to smile.”

Tickets for the potluck start at a minimum of $10. “The whole school community is welcome to come,” Young said, “Parents, students, anybody.”