Community Wide Fun Fest draws people in for faith, fellowship
Published 8:50 am Monday, July 22, 2019
NILES — When Helping Our People Evolve co-founder Beverly Woodson spoke about her group’s upcoming Community Wide Fun Fest earlier this month, she said she hoped the event would celebrate togetherness.
“We want it to be so diverse that people from all walks of life will come out and enjoy,” she said.
HOPE’s Fun Fest was hosted all afternoon last Saturday at Plym Park, and the event drew in people from Niles and beyond for a diversity of reasons, from faith to fellowship to a fight for economic opportunity.
The event was meant to be a way to highlight the diversity of Niles by showcasing minority vendors, performers and speakers, Woodson said.
It was also meant to be a place for fun. Games, food and spaces to meet with friends were also offered.
As positive music thumped from maroon speakers, attendees mingled with one another, visiting vendors or sitting back in the shade to talk with friends.
“You don’t get to see them often,” Jeanette Pearson, of Niles, said of the attendees. “It’s about fellowship.”
While Pearson talked with friends and passed out cherries and water to passersby, Bernice Rodgers and Traci Lee Smith said their goodbyes. Smith attended as a vendor of Juice Plus, while Rodgers attended as a singer for Fun Fest’s center stage.
Both were drawn to the event, though, because of its emphasis on community worship. In between performing acts and speakers, the event’s stage played worship music.
“It was a blessing for all of us who praise God to come together,” Rogers said.
Other attendees listened to speakers, who touched on subjects of equality and opportunity.
Before the event, HOPE co-founder Doug Freeman said unifying people at the event was key to organizing movements on social and economic issues.
“Unity equals power,” he said before the event. “What I mean by ‘power’ is the power to change. I’m hoping this will inspire [visitors] to come together in a unified spirit to deal with some of the injustices.”
Isaac Hunt Jr., group intervention specialist at Goodwill Industries of Michiana, made unification a key point in a speech at the event about creating economic opportunities for minority groups. He canceled plans to speak in another state to attend the local event.
Hunt emphasized unifying community members to challenge local leaders — whether people on city councils, school boards or church leadership — to create economic justice for minority communities.
“I challenge each and every person here today to continue to do what you do,” he said. “Speak truth to power. Don’t let power speak truth to you. Don’t allow other people to control what your narrative is.”
He said that his job allows him to help people do things like obtain licenses, manage child support, buy houses and find insurance. He said if people have access to resources like those, economic barriers are removed, allowing people to become entrepreneurs or shorten economic gaps.
“It’s about doing it with less arrests and saving lives,” he said. “It’s about helping victims of violent crimes, helping them [with] cognitive help, therapeutic help and low-hanging fruit help.”
Like Hunt, Vida A. Harley, of South Bend, came with her grandson, Robert, to empower others. She did it through chess.
In front of Harley’s tent were giant handmade cutouts of chess pieces. Inside the tent were chess boards for people to learn the game and compete in it.
Harley has implemented her Chess for Change program in other communities and at school lunch rooms and in-school suspension rooms. She said the game can help lead to positive personal and societal change.
“It’s a positive activity for youth,” she said. “Chess helps you strategize, calm down.”
Chess clubs are in many school systems, but Harley noticed they tended to exist only in elementary and middle schools. She wanted to extend the program to all schooling levels.
She said chess is a great game for any mover and shaker. She recommends chess to the women she helps through her other venture, Women Entrepreneurs Matter, a resource organization.
“People do need to know this is an important tool,” she said.
This is the second year HOPE has hosted Community Wide Fun Fest, but the event has existed in other iterations and under another group since the early 2000s.