Annual event puts focus on Meadville community

Feb. 19—Passports, ushers, prizes: It's not a destination wedding or an international competition; it's the seventh annual Meadville the Beloved Community Fair.

With more than 65 organizations, agencies and community resources, the event of the season is expected to transform the Meadville Area Middle School (MAMS) gymnasium Wednesday from 6 to 8 p.m. All community members are welcome to participate, according to Principal Jon Frye, but they should plan on arriving early and staying late if they want to stamp all of the highlights as completed.

"We will be honoring a special guest at 6 p.m. — I don't want to give away who," Frye said late last week.

Once the surprise recognition opens the event, participants will commence their journeys with either digital or printed passports and the traveling bags provided for the event. Like travelers on a grand tour, they'll strike out to visit each site, with an opportunity for photos along the way and a chance to sample the cuisine.

With each pause at tables staffed by local entities that make a difference in the quality of life for Meadville citizens, the visitors will have their passports stamped and their horizons broadened as they learn more about the world they thought they knew.

And they'll have help along the way in the form of ushers from the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Mentoring Program, an after school activity at MAMS, and the Allegheny College football team.

"Ushers will be helping people to unload, bringing things in and guiding people through the beloved community, the food booth, the photo booth and so on," said Armendia Dixon, who leads the mentoring program and who first started the community fair in 2018. "They will be valuable to the beloved community."

The "beloved community" theme is drawn from "The Birth of a New Age," a 1956 address that Martin Luther King Jr. gave in Buffalo, New York. In the early stages of the Civil Rights Movement, King looked ahead to when the boycotts, protests and struggles had had their intended impact. The goal of the movement, King said, was to move beyond protest to redemption and to achieve a beloved community, "a society where men will live together as brothers."

To help lure local residents into the pursuit of such an objective, the evening culminates with entry into the prize arena — for those who have properly stamped passports, that is. The stamped passports earn participants raffle tickets that can be entered to win a variety of electronic devices and other prizes, with winners announced at the end of the event.

For Joe Galbo, who has helped to take over organization of the event from its founder, Dixon, it's more than just cool prizes that make the fair such a great event.

"At a time in a society where there's so much division and so much focus on how people are different, this is one night out of the year to show the things that we have in common," Galbo said, "and the primary thing is this community."

It's a community, he continued, with much to offer to its members, though the resources and those who need them are not always aware of each other. Bringing them all together in one middle school gymnasium makes for quite a journey, according to Galbo.

"We think it's a unique event," he said.

YOU CAN GO

Meadville the Beloved Community fair takes place from 6 to 8 p.m. Wednesday at Meadville Area Middle School. The free event includes food and drink; representatives from more than 65 area agencies, nonprofits, businesses and other organizations; and drawings to win numerous prizes.

Mike Crowley can be reached at (814) 724-6370 or by email at mcrowley@meadvilletribune.com.