Mounir Rahal stood behind the glass counter of his jewelry store where a satellite feeds live images from the Middle East to a television set that plays above his head. On a nearby wall, a poster depicts the image of a colorful hibiscus flower that blossoms in front of the Twin Towers and reads: Bloom Again.

Born in Lebanon, Rahal came to America 25 years ago and eventually settled in South Glens Falls because, he said, it makes him feel at home.

"It is a nice community, cozy, friendly people," Rahal said.

He and his wife raised their five children to have an understanding of their cultural heritage. In the process, they provided them the wisdom of a worldview.

ERIN REID COKER - COKER@POSTSTAR.COM Mounir Rahal, owner of M. Rahal Jewelers on Saratoga Avenue in South Glens Falls, works on a customer's ring late Wednesday afternoon.

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"There were some racial tensions here at the time and our principal said, 'Go out and look to see what we can do.' Teachers came back and said this is something that we can't afford not to be involved in," DeMartino recalled. "It's about breaking down the walls that separate us and finding out how we all connect. It's not the cure-all for discrimination -- we see it as the infrastructure and build it within the fabric of our school," he said.

As students at Saratoga, Sarah Couvillon, Jordan Smith and Jessica Podesva have all attended the workshops.

"I would recommend it to everybody," said Couvillon, who will be studying early childhood education at Schenectady Community College in the fall. "I think if you take the time to go and allow yourself to accept it, it can really change your life," she said.

"The first time I went it was a little scary. You introduce yourself and tell about something that people wouldn't know by looking at you," Podesva added. "Eventually, you grow more confident and have more of an understanding of each other. You learn we all have something in common," she said.

Smith, who is black, said he went away from the sessions with a deeper understanding of differences.

"I learned that you can't judge people by how they look. You've got to get to know them first," he said.

Tolerance and inclusion

"In the context of human beings, diversity is the various array of talents and backgrounds and groups that make up humanity. It's the whole swath that humanity encompasses," DeMartino said. "And, there's a difference between tolerance and inclusion. Tolerance is what you accept to put up with. Inclusion is making the effort to include people," he said.

In the fall, the program will be adopted at a number of Warren County schools, with districts in Hudson Falls, Glens Falls and Queensbury joining in. Other schools are pushing forward with new programs as well.

At the Newcomb Central School District, a Global Community Program will welcome high school students from abroad who will live with local residents and become involved in all aspects of school and community life. The first five students, who are from Europe and Asia, will be arriving in the fall.

DEREK PRUITT - DPRUITT@POSTSTAR.COM Mike Zimmerman sits in front of his coffee shop, Saratoga Coffee Traders, on Broadway in Saratoga Springs recently. Zimmerman and his partner, Jon Galt, were married in Massachusetts in 2004 and have found a very welcoming home for their business on a small section of Broadway they call 'Little SoHo.'

To order copies of staff-produced photos from The Post-Star, please visit http://reprints.poststar.com/.

Learning about yourself

In addition to tending to their children, parents are also learning things about themselves.

Satish Bhat emigrated to Saratoga County from his native India to work for a software company. A decade later, after paying property taxes and raising his children to send them to area schools, he was shocked to learn he couldn't even register his vote at the polling booth for the school budget.

On the 4th of July, he joined a number of other state residents who emigrated from Brazil and Thailand, Russia and points beyond, in a naturalization ceremony at the Saratoga National Historic Park.

Saratoga-based parents Marc Woodworth and Emma Dodge Hanson adopted their daughter Calla in Ethiopia.

Being white parents who have an African child, Woodworth said he felt strongly about exposing his 3-year-old daughter to African-American culture. Still, he said, even within one culture, lies another.

"Calla is literally an African-American child. She is from Africa but she's Ethiopian-American," said Woodworth, who wondered the extent of a cultural relationship that can be shared between his Ethiopian-born child and that of an African-American child whose family has been in America for generations.

Despite its lack of diversity, Woodworth said the educational and cultural resources in Saratoga -- with places like Skidmore College where he is a teacher -- is conducive to creating cultural possibilities.

Diversity on the Skidmore campus is not without its own learning curve, however. Hilal Isler -- Skidmore's first-ever Student Diversity Programs Director -- resigned her position a few months ago after receiving what she called "alarming" responses to opinions she expressed about a bus driver who she said made racial slurs over the vehicle's loudspeaker during a visit to Sea World.

Color and blood

If ancestral bloodlines are one area of diversity, color is another, more obvious difference.

The 2000 U.S. Census reported 67.9 percent of the population living in the state were white.

In Saratoga, Warren and Washington counties, the white population amounted to 95 percent, or higher.

Lee Braggs, who is black, moved to Glens Falls from Mississippi in the early 1970s.

"Talk about culture shock. I left a place that was about 50-50 people of color and came here, which was less than one percent," Braggs said.

"If you're in the minority, just getting something as simple as a haircut, you had to travel to Albany," said Braggs, who served as the president of the Glens Falls chapter of the NAACP for nearly 20 years.

Like Rahal, Braggs said teaching kids about diversity begins with their own bloodlines.

"For parents, they need to make sure their kids know their culture. You have to know where you came from before you know where you're going," he said.

"My son grew up in Glens Falls and what I tried to instill in him is that you kneed to know your culture and be sensitive to other cultures."

A generation later, Braggs said discrimination still exists. It's just that it's harder to realize.

"Overt racism has become a thing of the past, but there are still covert little things that if you're not a person of color you might take for granted, or just not see," he said.

"You have to walk a day in my shoes and then you'll know."

Appreciation

"I think people should appreciate diversity. If everyone was the same, what kind of place would the world be like?" asked Kathy Sephas, chairperson of Saratogians for Equality and Acceptance of Diversity, or SEAD. The organization has hosted an arts and crafts-focused diversity day in Saratoga Springs the first Sunday in June for the past 10 years.

Sephas describes herself by many titles: parent to two daughters and native Saratogian are just two.

"African-American is what people call me," she said "But, I have Native American in me also. You can categorize me as an African-American, but

I'm a human being," Sephas said.

Five years ago, Erin Clark was a seventh grade student at the Fort Ann school in Washington County when she was asked to help organize a massive event at the Queensbury Hotel that brought 170 students from 26 school districts together to talk about diversity.

"I was the president of my class so I was part of the planning committee," Clark recalled.

"Everyone decided that diversity should be covered because diversity can be a big problem for kids in school. I was able to sit at a table as part of the conference and talk to people from different schools. Some students saw it as a whole big problem. For others, it was more of a personal issue and feeling like an outcast," she said.

"When I was younger I probably would have defined diversity as people not being accepting of others. I play sports, so what I discussed was how even high school sports teams can have diversity. You play as a team, but even on a team there is a diversity," said Clark, who will be leaving Fort Ann to attend classes at Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire in the fall.

"Coming from Fort Ann, I'm a small town girl. I would love to return and live and raise my children here in the future," she said.

"I want to be a Special Ed teacher. That's what I'm planning on doing. I would like to help children with special needs to feel not so much that they are an outcast, and help them feel not so out of place," Clark said.

"I have a brother who is autistic. When a person is part of your own family -- that's how diversity hits you harder," she said.