O.C. melting pot

NEWPORT BEACH — Sheeva Lotfian finds it remarkable sometimes that she ended up living in south Orange County. The Laguna Niguel resident is the daughter of an Iranian father and an Indonesian mother who met in college in Michigan — and this summer, she’ll be visiting her mother’s home country only for the first time.

“I think it’s going to be really different,” Sheeva, 17, said Saturday morning during Sage Hill School’s seventh annual Multicultural Fair. “I’ve had my cousins visit here from Indonesia, and they tell me it’s a very different lifestyle here.”

The Multicultural Fair, which brings together food, music and crafts from around the world, serves to remind the Sage Hill community that many varied cultures make up Orange County.

Saturday on the school’s Wilkins Town Square, families set up booths to offer cuisine and fact sheets about their countries of origin, while musicians took the stage to perform an eclectic mix of songs.

The fair raised money for the school’s Financial Aid Endowment Fund, with a silent auction, $5 for admission and $1 for tickets to purchase food.

Head of School Judith Glickman said, however, that the event was hardly just a fundraiser.

“I have waited, since the first day I heard about Sage Hill School, for this Multicultural Fair,” said Glickman, who is in her first year at the school. “It celebrates diversity. It brings our broader community here onto the town square. We see our school being part of the broader Orange County, and Orange County is really a microcosm of the world.”

She added that multiculturalism at Sage Hill goes far beyond the fair — Glickman herself is a first-generation American with German and Austrian parents, and she attended Saturday’s event wearing a shawl that she recently bought on a trip to India.

As more than 100 parents, students and faculty milled around the square, flags of different countries lined the grass area and a replica of the Statue of Liberty towered over the stage. Many of the country booths featured elaborate designs, including a German-style castle and a Japanese gate with lanterns hanging from the ceiling.

Becky McLaughlin, one of the parent organizers, said she had learned something from the fair each of the five years she had worked on it.

“You’re always learning about people’s flags, their traditions, what they serve,” she said. “It really helps pull our Sage Hill families together in a real sense of community.”

MICHAEL MILLER may be reached at (714) 966-4617 or at michael.miller@latimes.com.