Mid-Town Make a “Green” Difference Day

The Everette Hodge Community Center and Franklin Street (from Broadway to Prospect) will be the site for the Fourth Annual Midtown Make A Difference Day on Saturday, June 13.

This healthy living and community awareness street festival is sponsored by the Ulster County Multi-Service Center at the City of Kingston Everette Hodge Center with the Rose Women’s Care Services, Ulster County Office For the Aging and Kingston CARES, Kingston Area Library and Kingston Boys & Girls Club as well as other local community-based agencies and businesses. There will be live music, a walk through the city from City Hall, exhibits, arts and crafts, a bike safety workshop, face painting, free food and more.

This is a family event. Franklin Street will be blocked from Broadway to Prospect Street (the Library) all day with festivities beginning at 10:30 A.M. and ending at 4 P.M.

The day will kick-off at the Victory Garden at City Hall. At 8:45 A.M., participants needing transportation to City Hall will meet in the Kingston Library parking lot for bagels. At 9 a.m. sharp, the Kingston Trolley bus will leave the Kingston Library with participants to carry them to the Victory Gardens at City Hall. These participants will be greeted at City Hall by Alderwoman Shirley Whitlock (D-4th Ward) and an overview of the garden will be done by garden designer Rebecca Martin.

The walkers will then proceed up Broadway toward the library taking in a tour of historical sites along the way with tour guide Jennifer Schwarz. Step counters and T-shirts will be handed out to the walkers on a first-come first-serve basis. The group of walkers will reach Franklin Street just in time for Children’s Super Saturday at the Kingston Library and a welcome at center-stage on Franklin Street by City Officials.

The Super Saturday at Kingston Library at 10:30 A.M. will host illusionist Terri Parrett. Community members are invited to come and experience the astonishing magic, mirth and mystery of Terri’s Magic Comedy Show.

The theme for this year’s Make a Difference Day is “Making A Green Difference Today.” Some forty plus community-based organizations will be on hand to share information on Keeping it green, keeping it clean, keeping it healthy. The day will be filled with fun, information, healthy workshops, basketball slam dunking, entertainment, free food, face printing, door-prizes, Rainbow the Clown, arts and crafts, a chalk walk mural contest and community members may savor healthy food choices. A reading corner will be unveiled at Hodge in memory of Lena Moultrie, a Hodge Center youth that passed away earlier this year and Assemblyman Kevin Cahill will be present to read a book to the children at the unveiling beginning at 1 p.m.

Bringing music to the streets will be the X-treme DJ Pure of Morgan Hill Sound Productions. Featured also at center stage will be a rising local young R&B artist, Shaleah and her back-up dancers who recently released her first CD and opened in concert with Jagged Edge.

Rebecca Martin, of the Victory Gardens Project of the Kingston Land Trust, will assist Hodge Center youth, Kingston CARES, and community children with planting a children’s garden at the Hodge Center and flowers in front of homes in Mid-town. A rain barrel for watering the children’s garden at the center will also be installed.

For more information or to request a registration form for your organization, please contact Sandy Thompson-Hopgood, Community Outreach Coordinator at the City of Kingston Everette Hodge Center at (845) 331-9683.

UlsterCorps will be tabling at the Hodge Center throughout the day and would like to thank Adams Fairacre Farms for their generous donation of reusable canvas bags which will be distributed to participants in our Harvesting a Lifetime Green Difference Project.