Please note that these events are not sponsored by Parent Council.
ABC Fall Foliage Walk, October 18th. This year the 40th Annual ABC Walk will feature a free concert with Charles Neville, a barbecue, a community art project, and other activities on the Town Common. It is ABC's 40th Anniversary, and for nearly all of those years we have been presenting the Walk. At the ABC House on North Prospect Street we board eight young men of color who come from inner city neighborhoods in the northeast, while they attend ARHS. Over a hundred young men have graduated through the program. ABC has come to stand for educational equity, academic excellence, and community service. In recent years the walk has attracted 300-400 participants who walked along 12 miles of wonderful trails in Amherst, Leverett and Shutesbury. Peter Lambdin and former Ft. River teacher Sandy McNiven (now retired) have been champions of the ABC Walk for decades, leading their classes on the walk year after year. This year, to celebrate our 40th, the walk will be much shorter (5k) along a paved route that families can enjoy. It will begin at 10:00 am on the Common. The concert with the Charles Neville Quartet will begin around 12:30. Charles, one of the Neville Brothers, is a renowned jazz saxophonist, and his local band plays jazz standards, and New Orleans-flavored blues and funk. The event will be catered by The Pub. This is a chance to celebrate the diversity of our community while enjoying a walk under the canopy of diverse colors, and to enjoy good music and food with our neighbors. Register for the walk online at www.amherstabetterchance.org.
This Halloween, Join the Reverse Trick-or-Treat! Trick-or-treaters can give chocolate BACK to adults this Halloween...Fair Trade chocolate, attached to a card with thanks and information on how Fair Trade certified chocolate presents a solution to problems faced by
cocoa-growing communities, such as poverty, child labor and environmental degradation. The kits are free to participating individuals, schools, congregations, and youth groups, who pay only postage. This new tradition is a wonderful way for trick-or-treaters to give back to their
communities...and the world...bringing important meaning to the holiday. Deadline to order kits: Monday, October 13. Reverse Trick-or-Treating is organized by the human rights and environmental organization Global Exchange. To order kits or for more information, please visit http://www.reversetrickortreating.org. Also visit this website to find excellent educational resources for families and teachers on the subject of fair trade cocoa. Please contact the Amherst Fair Trade Partnership at amherstfairtrade@earthlink.net if you participate so you can be added to their count!
HUNGER BANQUET. Thursday October 16, 2008, 6 - 7:30 PM. Suggested Minimum Donation: $5.00. Proceeds will go to Oxfam and the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts Organized by the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst. Please join us at the UUSA Meetinghouse for an Oxfam America Hunger Banquet, a learning experience for all ages. The dinner is designed to raise awareness of global hunger issues and to raise funds to support Oxfam's poverty-fighting work. The Meetinghouse is located at 121 North Pleasant Street, Amherst. For more information on Oxfam and Hunger Banquets please see: http://www.oxfamamerica.org/whatyoucando/act_now/fast. How it works: Guests draw tickets at random that assign them each to a high-, middle-, or low-income tier and receive a corresponding meal. The 15 percent in the high-income tier are served a sumptuous meal. The 35 percent in the middle-income section eat a simple meal of rice and beans. The 50 percent in the low-income tier help themselves to small portions of rice and water. (High-, middle-, and low-income statistics used in the Oxfam America Hunger Banquet event are based on the World Bank Development Indicators 2007.) Guests can also assume characterizations that describe the situation of a specific person at the income level to which they've been assigned. Finally, all guests are invited to share their thoughts after the meal.
After an Oxfam America Hunger Banquet event, few participants leave with full stomachs, but all possess a greater understanding of the problems of hunger and poverty and will hopefully be motivated to do something about them.
A note from Parent Council. We will publish information about non-Parent Council sponsored events with the following conditions:
1. The event should be of interest to Fort River families.
2. The information should be sent to Ann McLaughlin at damclaughlin@comcast.net in the form of a short description.
3. Contact information (website or name, telephone and/or email address) must be included.
We add new information to the blog every Friday during the school year. Please note that we do not accept announcements of items or services for sale (with the exceptions of children's classes/lessons). Inclusion in this section does not imply any guarantees or endorsements by Fort River Parent Council or Fort River School.
