| ST. LOUIS, MO – The Amherst Park Peace Festival on Saturday, September 12, 2015 will bring together African American, Hispanic, immigrant and white residents of this northeast St. Louis City neighborhood in a cross-cultural event designed to promote peace and harmony.
The third Amherst Park Peace Festival was founded in 2010 after a teenage immigrant was slain in the neighborhood. The event uses live music, ethnic foods and dance presentations to bring diverse groups of people together to mingle, participate in health screenings and learn about community resources such as tutoring, housing and mental health. “The Amherst Park Peace Festival is a successful prototype of how communities throughout the St. Louis region can bring together people of different cultures and backgrounds for cross-cultural engagement,” said Cecilia Nadal, executive director of Gitana Productions, the organization that launched the festival in 2010. Amherst Park Peace Festival The idea of a unity concert stemmed from a tragedy in June 2010, when 15-year-old Eritrean refugee Sahele Wodede was slain in the Amherst neighborhood. Gitana Productions planned a concert and walked the neighborhood to personally invite both black and immigrant residents. That first peace festival was successful in initiating public engagement between the two groups, each of which had suffered from misperceptions and discrimination against the other. Gitana’s work to engage immigrants in the Amherst neighborhood and invite them to the festival was featured in a PBS series Homeland: Immigration in America in August 2012. “People can co-exist without relationships, but community means more than co-existing," Nadal said. "When communities come together through authentic relationship development this can reduce violence." Today, the event draws 300 to 400 people of many diverse cultures – African American, immigrant, Hispanic and white – for music, ethnic food, arts and conversation in the small, intimate Amherst Park. Entertainment will include: Fifteen organizations are involved in the peace festival, which is coordinated by Andrew Stern of The WORKDAY. Gitana Productions coordinates arts and entertainment. Other collaborators include Cornerstone, City of St. Louis, City of St. Louis Civil Rights Enforcement Agency, Firm Foundation Tutoring Program, International Institute of St. Louis, Places for People, SLACO, Center for Survivors of Torture and Trauma, St. Louis Art Museum and the St. Louis Mental Health Board. Additional community organizations that will be at the festival include Grace Hill Grandparents as Parents and Volunteer Program, Grace Hill Early Childhood Education Program, Affinia Healthcare, West End Mount Carmel Full Gospel Baptist Church, and Harambee-Youth training. Washington University’s Public Health Department will provide outreach for their program on the elimination of regional disparities in cancer. Amherst Park is located south of Page Blvd. and east of Skinker Blvd., and can be accessed via Hodiamont near Page. For more information on the festival, call Gitana at (314) 721-6556. Gitana Productions, Inc. is a not-for-profit arts and education organization dedicated to increasing cross-cultural awareness and collaboration by bringing international music, dance and drama to the St. Louis community. Events produced by Gitana present a rarely seen diversity of international and local artists exhibiting both traditional and innovative artistic expressions. For more information, visit www.gitana-inc.org or call Gitana Productions at (314) 721-6556. # # #
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Source: Gitana – News