Mount Airy City Schools will be putting on a Community Peacefest Monday, which organizers say will be a way to focus on the need for world peace, as well as celebrate the diversity Mount Airy and its school system enjoys.
Polly Long, who is the city schools’ coordinator of workforce initiatives as well as the leader of youth services for the Rotary Club of Mount Airy, said this year’s event is an expansion of the Multicultural Arts Festival the school system held in May of 2021.
“We were very excited about what we did last year, that had never been done before,” she said of the event, which included groups of students putting on displays representing different countries.
“We are a very diverse school system, we have a lot of diversity in our community,” she said. “We were thrilled at the amount of people who came, we were particularly excited that people started to come in their ethnic clothes.”
So, school officials decided to do something similar, but with a Rotary-inspired twist.
“World peace is the cornerstone of Rotary clubs,” Long said, and there were grant opportunities for Rotary Clubs to use to build peace parks, “A real place where people could go, where they could think about world peace.”
The club, along with the school, was able to secure a grant to help build a peace park on Market Street, site of last year’s art festival and where the Mount Airy Downtown and Main Street programs use for many of their festivals and activities.
While there is no place large enough for a park there, Long said they used the grant to develop a couple of “pocket parks,” with a plaque, rose bushes and peace posts at two of the corners of the parking lot.
Long explained peace poles are similar to short totem poles, with children’s work wrapped around the poles, depicting what peace means to the children who created the artwork.
As planning for the event and the peace parks came together, Russia invaded Ukraine.
“Suddenly, before our eyes on television every night we are seeing the horrors of war, and we realize there is not peace in our world,” she said, making next week’s gathering all the more poignant.
Part of the event will include booths or tents set up by student groups, showing what they have discovered and learned about their chosen land — among the displays, she said, will be ones on China, Nigeria, Mexico, Columbia, and the American territory of Puerto Rico.
“Students have developed their own little talks, will lead discussions on what all these customs are…what they wear.”
The idea behind highlighting other lands, Long said, is simple: “The more we know about each other, the more we know about other countries, we realize there are more similarities than differences between people.”
And last, she said, the event will feature a Rotary tent, where the group will be collecting money to be sent to relief efforts in Ukraine.
“We kept thinking, if only we could do something for the people in Ukraine. This is not going to change their lives…but this is something we can do, it is at least a public awareness opportunity. We’re excited about the children being involved. We hope people will listen to the children as they talk about peace.
“We starting working on it in the fall,” she said of the idea of a second festival. “In the fall we didn’t know about the peace park. We added the peace park, but we didn’t know about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Each layered on top of the other, and that is where we are today.”
In addition to students from throughout the city school system, other groups will be on hand, including Living Rhythm, an African drum group sponsored by the Surry Arts Council, a Chinese lion dancer, and Mariachi dancers, thanks to the Mount Airy Museum of Regional History.
“This is truly one of these festivals that reaches a lot of areas…It is truly community collaboration,” she said.
The festival gets underway at 5 p.m. on Market Street on Monday, April 25, and is expected to last until 8 p.m.
Source: https://www.mtairynews.com
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