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Public Employee Press
Family day: Focus on the future
DC 37s 25th annual Family Day Feb. 4 celebrated African
American culture through bead making and drummers workshops, a film
on modern day Buffalo Soldiers and a college fair for union members and
their families.
Family Day is a chance to expose your children to this union and
the world of work, said DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts.
The union is our community. Roberts served as labor chair
for the United Negro College Fund and helped raise $110,000 for the education
charity.
DC 37 and UNCF hosted the unions first collaborative college fair
featuring 39 historically Black colleges. Hopeful students and their parents
talked with alumni from Morehouse, Spellman, Dillard, Tuskegee and other
universities about applying to and paying for college.
These days students need tools to survive in this
complex society, and these college fairs will help members learn the ins
and outs getting their children into college, Roberts said.
Workshops featured Simply Skins and the Bead Master, a film highlighting
the volunteer disaster relief of Buffalo Soldiers, who rebuilt homes in
St. Croix destroyed by hurricanes, and the Black History Committee, which
sponsors the annual event, engaged youngsters in the black trivia game
Who am I? which had children racing around the room to collect
the names of important African American achievers, inventors and other
historical figures.
At the Extraordinary Black Men Initiative workshop, UNCFs Eileen
Frank talked to black youth about meeting todays challenges, beating
the odds and changing adverse trends. Today our youth are targets,
she said. They are more likely to go to prison than college. And
more of our children are settling for GEDs instead of graduating with
high school diplomas.
Starting in April, UNCF will hold monthly college fairs
at DC 37 headquarters to walk parents and their children through the application
process and on to campus. If you think you dont have enough
money to go to college, well be here as a resource, Frank
said. Our children should begin to see themselves as college material
to make that step to a better life.
DC 37 invites members to attend the college fairs with their children
and neighbors, to instill in them the importance of education and
get the keys theyll need to succeed and make a difference,
Frank said.
I have been coming to Family Day for 25 years, said Carolyn
Askew, a Local 1549 member who brought along her two sisters and great-niece.
The whole day is about family and activities that keep us close.
We need to expose the next generation to what the different aspects of
African American culture and our labor union have to offer.
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