The Glade Valley congregation in Walkersville, MD, one of OEP’s blessed community groups,  adopted 21 homeless highschoolers during this Christmas season and stuffed stockings for them with masks and many other valuable gifts.

Late last year we accepted our first two applicants for the Community Engagement Grants for Youth Groups (CEGYG). Our first group is the Boarderless Relations Committee from Finlay, OH who are helping youth in their community learn about racial dynamics as well as how to become anti-racist by providing books and workshops to elementary schools. We have met with them to map out their project and have held our first session on how to teach race-consciousness to kids. Two of our interns, Tamera and Priscilla, drew from our webinar Raising Race-Conscious Kids and discussed racial scripts, the detriment of colorblindness, and introduced the group to activities that might be useful in engaging young children. 

Happy New Year, everyone! Several children’s books are scheduled to be released in 2021. After looking at the various new releases, I created a list of 10 children’s books that I think you should look into reading or purchasing for the children in your life. The books I chose have characters from different backgrounds and address different topics, including empowerment and the importance of helping others in need. Here is the list of new book releases for 2021:

Butterfly for a King: Saving Hawai‛i’s Kamehameha Butterflies by Cindy Trumbore and Susan L. Roth, Illustrated by Susan L. Roth

“The fascinating true story of a beautiful native Hawaiian butterfly, a great Hawaiian warrior king, and current-day efforts by scientists and citizens to restore the butterfly’s declining population.”

The Read Aloud Project was created by Priscilla Weddle and Marie Benner-Rhoades to provide homeschooling resources in peace and justice during the pandemic. For December, the project highlighted books about Christmas. In January, books about new beginnings will be read. If you are interested in recording a video for the project, please email Priscilla at [email protected]. Here are the books that were read for the project in December:

Hey, Wall: A Story of Art and Community by Susan Verde

Summary: “There is a wall in Ángel’s neighborhood. Around it, the community bustles with life: music, dancing, laughing. Not the wall. It is bleak. One boy decides to change that. But he can’t do it alone.”

Reflective Question: Is there something in your community that you can work on to make beautiful?

YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7mPbucREas&list=PLF8eTiKnYWzyfmdio08rh1bnDcGDHaXsQ&index=71&t=1s

The Read Aloud Project has been going on since March of 2020. As of December 16, there have been 75 read aloud videos posted on On Earth Peace’s Facebook page. I went through the videos to see which ones had the most views. Our top five videos had a combined total of over 2,000 views. Here were the project’s most viewed videos in 2020:

1. Harriet Gets Carried Away by Jessie Sima

Total views on Facebook: 534

Summary: “Harriet loves costumes. She wears them to the dentist, to the supermarket, and most importantly, to her super-special dress-up birthday party. Her dads have decorated everything for the party and Harriet has her most favorite costume all picked out for the big day. There’s just one thing missing—party hats! But when Harriet dons her special penguin errand-running costume and sets out to find the perfect ones, she finds something else instead—real penguins! Harriet gets carried away with the flock. She may look like a penguin, but she’s not so sure she belongs in the arctic. Can Harriet manage her way back to her dads (and the party hats!) in time for her special day?”

Reflective Question: Have you ever gotten carried away?

YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eBQHNXbN9M&list=PLF8eTiKnYWzyfmdio08rh1bnDcGDHaXsQ&index=19