MARY CLARK:
A Woman Shrinking the globe in Indianapolis, Indiana By Emily Longnecker
FALL 2021
A
HOPEFORWOMENMAG.COM
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t first, 42nd and Lafayette Road may seem like the last place you would expect to discover all the cultures that the world has to offer. In fact, you might even feel like you’re not in Indianapolis anymore — but you are, standing in the city’s new westside Global Village Center. “We hope when people walk through the doors, the first thing they say is, ‘Wow! I didn’t know a place like this existed,’” says Mary Clark, the executive director of The International Marketplace Coalition who led the center’s creation and is now its director. Although it opened in March during the COVID-19 pandemic, the center is planning to host a grand opening in October. It is a place where people can meet others whom they would never normally see and meet. The building has even received visits from ambassadors and consul generals. If an old furniture store on the westside seems like an unlikely place to host foreign dignitaries, you need to have a look inside the 5,500-square-foot building. On display are artifacts and cultural pieces from almost 90 countries, featuring everything from ceremonial masks from Ghana and Australia to a bull statue from India and a hanbok from South Korea. “Here on the westside of Indianapolis, we’re finding ways to shrink the globe and create a village,” explains Mary. She adds that the village really started growing in the mid90s, when the area around the once-popular Lafayette Square Mall started to change and any crime that occurred there received widespread media attention. “We started getting this little stigma about us being a bad place, and so businesses began to leave,” Mary remembers. “But, you know what happened? Our immigrant brothers and sisters started moving to Indianapolis around the same time.” As traditional businesses started leaving what they perceived to be a declining area, immigrants began to move in
