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PEP March 2006
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Public Employee Press

Family day: Focus on the future

DC 37’s 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 union’s 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, UNCF’s Eileen Frank talked to black youth about meeting today’s 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 don’t have enough money to go to college, we’ll 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 they’ll 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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