Nine students recited the United Nations preamble in their native languages at the Houston United Nations Day Gala on Oct. 24. The gala commemorated the 80th anniversary of the United Nations at the Junior League Houston.
Magnet and Advanced Placement coordinator Yabei Yin started planning for the event when the gala coordinators reached out first. Yin originally recruited magnet students but eventually opened up the opportunity to all students because she thought it was a “great opportunity.”
“They’d heard of Bellaire before, and they knew we have a magnet program that focuses on foreign languages,” Yin said. “It is a great experience just to see how there’s so many different cultures.”
The nine students selected each read one-ninth of the UN’s preamble. Yin, along with German teacher Henry Hannah and French teacher Heidi Florian, prepared their students through rehearsals.
“Even though we all go to the same school, we talk to each other in English,” Yin said. “Your friends, your classmates, you don’t see that other side of them.”
Although elementary schoolers typically read the preamble in previous UN galas, the organization felt that it would be more appropriate to feature high schoolers, especially for the 80th anniversary, according to sophomore Luca Hurtado-Borsa. Borsa learned Italian alongside English growing up and spoke his portion of the UN Preamble in Italian.
“Before we went to the preamble, I would just read out my section, like, 10 times a day to get it memorized beforehand,” Hurtado-Borsa said. “I felt pretty confident.”
Hurtado-Borsa wanted to recite the preamble to practice his public speaking skills. His favorite part of going to the gala was finding traditional Sardinian clothes to wear.
“My mom is from Sardinia,” Hurtado-Borsa said. “I think it was really important how they represented multiple speakers of different languages from different countries to show the diversity.”
Bellaire offers nine languages as part of the magnet program. However, senior and magnet ambassador president Eliza Teo wanted to represent her native language, Korean, which isn’t a part of the language program.
“I was interested in representing Korean, because I would say that being Korean is part of my future identity and my upbringing,” Teo said. “I think I responded to the email within 10 minutes of when it was sent, because it sounded like an amazing opportunity, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.”
As magnet ambassador president, Teo said that she felt the responsibility to “make the vibes” for the students, especially given her background in public speaking through Speech and Debate.
“Alaa, the Arabic representative, came up to me and asked if I could give them any advice to be less scared for the reading on the stage,” Teo said. “I answered to take a deep breath as the last person finished speaking, and then, just go for it. And yeah, everybody did phenomenal.”
In rehearsing for the gala, UN representatives visited the students. Representatives confirmed the represented nation and flag for each student and coached students on public speaking skills.
“We were all kind of anxious and unexpectant,” Teo said. “We weren’t really expecting who was going to come. During our actual presentation, [a representative] was also in the back of the room, and she would do a thumbs up motion or a hand up motion if any of our volumes were too low.”
The gala also featured keynote speakers Emmy Award-winning journalist Rosie Nguyen and Rachel Bowen Pittman, Executive Director of the United Nations Association of the USA. Yin believes the experience was “pretty powerful” for students.
“When they’re all gathered in one room, you can see that it’s just very powerful to see all of them speaking their own languages,” Yin said. “It’s really good for the students to see each other, how we’re represented, and to be able to go to this event to represent themselves.”
Alia Hassan • Oct 29, 2025 at 9:56 am
Such an amazing story!