The Friends Program is holding a free family fun event in Keach Park on Saturday to celebrate International Friendship Day. The event, called Friends-a-Palooza, will run from 2 to 5 p.m. and will feature 15 different activities for kids including crafts, field games, face painting, snacks, giant bubbles, yoga, kid Zumba and a storytelling read-a-thon.
The event will be open to the entire community and will include special outreach to the at-risk youth in the local area.
“We started planning the event to celebrate Friendship Day,” said development director Laura Miller. “We’re the Friends Program, so we wanted to use that excuse to highlight youth programming and reintroduce the Friends Program to the community after COVID limited our ability to be as visible. We said, ‘let’s have a party in the park and make it free for people to attend.’ ”
At the event, Miller said they plan to spread awareness about their youth mentoring program, as they’re seeking to create more mentor and mentee matches with children ages 6 to 10. Besides mentoring programs for at-risk youth, the Friends Program offers emergency housing for homeless families with children, an intergenerational program that brings seniors to work with students in classrooms and a senior volunteer program to help serve unmet needs in the community. The majority (75%) of the children served by the Friends Program live below the federal poverty level and more than two-thirds are from new American families.
This is the first time the organization has held Friends-a-Palooza, but Miller said they hope to make it an annual event.
While Saturday’s Friends-a-Palooza event is free, donations will be accepted to benefit the Friends Program’s services.