Beloved Community lives up to its name

Feb. 22—Love, thankfully, is not measured in hot dogs but if it were — well, there was plenty of love in evidence Wednesday during the Meadville the Beloved Community Fair held inside the Meadville Area Middle School gym.

As students and their family members snaked through line after line of tables staffed by representatives of more than 60 local organizations, participants in the middle school's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Mentoring Program were stationed in one corner behind an arrangement of hot dogs stacked high and trays of chips.

Eighth grader Brendalyn Noble was serving hot dogs to event-goers while classmates offered visitors chips and drinks. In addition to their after-school activities in the program, participants volunteer at events like the community fair.

"It's fun — you learn different things, you get to go swimming and sometimes ice skating," Noble said of the after-school activities that take place Monday through Thursday during the school year. The extra engagement has definitely helped her in school, she said, and taking part in events like the community fair offered an opportunity to take "a break from her phone" and instead spend time interacting with people.

It wasn't a sales pitch exactly, since the food was free, but it was effective marketing: The hot dog hill steadily decreased in size as more than a few kids and adults walked away with a snack.

Across the gym floor, similar marketing campaigns were underway with representatives of Meadville Central Fire Department, Meadville Area Recreation Complex, Meadville Area Free Clinic, Meadville Public Library, Meadville Medical Center and many other community-focused Meadville-area organizations.

The passport-style event provided participants with a thick "passport" that they carried to each organization's table, getting their pages stamped after a brief visit with the folks staffing the table. By the end of the evening, the well-traveled participants took their heavily stamped books to the passport officials who distributed raffle tickets — five for each participant who received the required stamps.

The raffle tickets could then be used for chances at dozens of prizes at the end of the evening — about $2,000 in prizes, according to Jim Shields, market manager with 7 Mountains Media LLC, who helped organize the event along with Joe Galbo, chief assessor for Crawford County. Both men are board members of the Meadville Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Fund Inc., which partnered with Crawford County School District and Allegheny College to sponsor the event.

Row upon row of tables were laid out from one end of the basketball court to the other. For some the strategy was obvious — free candy, but for others it was more thematic in nature. School Resource Officer Nick Mogel, for instance, the Meadville Police Department officer who is stationed at the middle school-high school complex during the academic year, had free gun locks at his table.

"It's a great turnout," said Shields, surveying the crowd from nearby the hot dog station.

The evening started with a plaque presentation, Shields said, to honor the woman who launched the Meadville the Beloved Community Fair in 2018: Armendia Dixon.

The brief ceremony was meant not only to thank Dixon for starting the event but also to recognize "what she means to the community," Shields said.

"Her whole life is giving back to the community," he added.

At the opposite side of the gymnasium, office specialist Tammy Wills was one of several staff members representing Meadville Dental Center. On the table beside her, empty cans and bottles of more than a dozen popular drinks were affixed to a tri-fold display.

Beneath each container were resealable plastic bags containing a sweet but potentially dangerous crystaline substance. "Rethink your drink," the message across the top of the display read.

"It shows kids the amount of sugar in all the drinks they love to drink," Wills explained.

The dental center's strategy was at odds with the free candy available at many tables, but it made an impression. To the left was a 6-ounce pouch of Capri-Sun with 13 grams of sugar, including 11 grams of added sugar. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that kids aim for less than 25 grams of sugar intake each day.

Just to the right of the Capri-Sun was a half-pint of chocolate milk, "like what they can get at school," Wills pointed out. Below the milk was another baggie of sugar: 24 grams. All the way to the right of the display was a green 16-ounce Mountain Dew bottle. Below it, a swollen baggie holding 77 grams of sugar hung lower than all the others.

On the opposite side of the display, all the way to the left, was an empty water bottle: no sugar at all.

On the opposite side of the gym, next to where water was available at the increasingly depleted hot dog station, Galbo turned off his microphone and took a break from his duties as master of ceremonies.

"To have a gym full of students and their families — and these wonderful members of the community," he said, his glance sweeping over the lines of busy tables stretching across the gym. "This is Meadville, the beloved community."

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