The Just World Interact Club is beginning to prepare for the annual Just World Festival. The festival is a cultural melting pot, which includes food vendors,local businesses and keynote speaker Peter Ter.

Ter is one of the Lost Boys of Sudan who was displaced during the Second Sudanese Civil War. Over 20,000 young boys were displaced during the war.

The club is excited to have Ter as a speaker.

“I think Peter is truly inspirational; I love how humble and generous he is. He is definitely someone I would look up to and hope to be,” junior Alan Vargas said.

The goal of Just World is to send the message to young people about the importance of the world we live in, issues around the world and also to promote youth activism. The festival also promotes fair trade products such as coffee and tea.

“The message is to get young people to understand that there is a big world out there and we are all responsible for the world to get together,” Just World co-sponsor Katherine Mounteer said.

There will be multiple food vendors to represent different cultures from around the world.

“We will have food vendors that will be representing the different places around the world such as the Breeze vendor of Asian food and the Kaboos vendor of food from Middle East,” Just World president Soriya de Lopez said.

“I really liked the Indian food that they had last year at the festival,” sophomore Mario Gutierrez said.

In addition to different foods, the festival will also feature multiple local businesses. Little River Yoga will be giving yoga lessons and local jeweler, Ten Thousand Village will also be selling jewelry. Last year there were 33 different vendors.

“We’re really excited to add businesses to the festival,” de Lopez said.

In addition to the AHS community and surrounding school such as Woodson High School, Holmes Middle School, Poe Middle School and George Mason High School, representatives from Arlington County, Prince William county, Prince George’s County will be also attending the festival.

“The reason why other counties have been invited is  in order to raise awareness throughout Northern Virginia about social causes around the world and to find ways to solve them, and also to get involved many students to make some noise,” de Lopez said.

Just World will be taking place on Feb. 28 from 2:30-6 p.m. in the AHS Cafeteria. Admission is free and all are welcome to attend the festival.