Churches provide free lunch for children at Venango County Fair

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BY LEISEL KOBER
Local United Methodist Churches worked together Tuesday to distribute 300 lunches to youngsters who participated in the Venango County Fair.

“They’re waiting to show their pigs, eating their lunches and having fun,” volunteer Bert Taylor said.

The volunteers began handing out the lunches at 11 a.m., and by 12:15 p.m. only 30 were left.

“We feel like we make a friend when they leave the table,” said the Rev. Stephanie

Thompson, pastor of Nicklin and Center United Methodist churches. “They’re (the little kids) so excited about what they’re doing in the barns and we get to be a part of that.”
Nicklin, Center, East Grove, Deer Creek, Polk and Reynolds United Methodist churches all donated many items and hours to put together the treats for the kids.

A lot of the planning and organization of the volunteers is done by Betty Ghering, Amy Drewnowski and the Half-Bake Bakers at East Grove United Methodist.

“It has just been a wonderful experience for us,” Thompson said.

With the help of many more Venango County churches, the volunteers have been providing these lunches for seven years at the fair.

“It was fun and I got to know people too,” said the Rev. Drew Bell, pastor at East Grove and Polk UM churches. “It’s a mission and it’s a way for the churches to give back to the community.”

The lunches include a ham and cheese sandwich, fresh veggies, apple, chips and cookies with a small Bible pamphlet inside.

The 25 volunteers prepared the lunches Monday but made the sandwiches fresh Tuesday morning before arriving at the fair.

“The conference encouraged us to look for ways to outreach and give something back to the community,” Thompson said. “It’s really neat because some of the kids come and they’re looking forward to it.”

Kids who have to stay at the fair all week because of animal shows and other responsibilities sometimes have trouble affording fair food for seven days. That’s how the churches came up with the idea to give back and save participants a little bit of money.

“Nothing goes to waste and all the cuttings are going to the pigs and rabbits,” volunteer Ronald Emeigh said.

Republished with permission from The Derrick. 

http://www.thederrick.com/news/front_page/churches-provide-free-lunch-for-children-at-venango-county-fair/article_d3f39683-f526-5e92-b45a-fb8d39812eee.html

First Published Wednesday, August 5, 2015

Lots to do at Clarion County Fair, but it’s mainly about the animals

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BY LEISEL KOBER

Forget the Clarion County Fair food and fun, for many local youngsters the most exciting part is coming back every year to show animals.

“She’s my best friend,” Austin Kirkpatrick, 12, of Rimersburg, said as she looked at her horse, Jewels.

Kirkpatrick has raised horses since she was 6 years old and this is her fifth time showing the horse at the fair. She enjoys taking Jewels to rodeos and trail riding as well.

“I like these animals; they’re friendly and small,” Bailey Snyder, 8, said about her goats, Wesley and Cocoa.

Snyder is experiencing her first time showing her animals.

“I’m nervous,” Snyder said quietly on Monday.

Synder is showing her goats today at the 4-H goat judging.

This year Kirkpatrick already has won second place in barrels, first place in pole bending and third in showmanship.

“You do a whole bunch of gaming, like bobbing for apples,” Kirkpatrick said referring to Thursday’s open horse show (game). “Then we go diving straight into the mud puddles in the horse ring.”

“It’s a good experience and you get money after selling them,” Callie Songer, 16, of New Bethlehem, said. “It’s just a tradition.”

Songer raised her two pigs to show. She sold one Sunday and plans to sell the other at the auction.

“You get really attached to them and it’s rough,” Songer said. “You just kind of have to know what is gonna come when you’re raising them for 4-H.”

Songer has been participating in the fair since she was 8 years old.

Another young goat raiser is Maddie Kephart, 15, of Kittanning, who is part of Martin Hill Livestock.

“It’s fun because I like to work with animals,” Kephart said.

Kephart said the goats have taught her responsibility and have helped her build character during the last nine years. She now cares for about 20 goats all together.

It’s not just the kids who love their animals, many enjoy coming to the fair and sharing their animal expertise with a new generation.

“There’s a lot of people who have never seen a milking short horn (cow) so why not bring her to let the people see,” Judy Radaker of Minnick Farms, said. “I just like the fact of bringing them for the kids to see.”

Radaker brought her cows, for the first time, to this year’s fair with encouragement from her boyfriend Kyle Minnick, owner of Minnick Farms.

As Radaker stands in the stall she points to each of her seven cows spread throughout the barn. She then smiled and pointed to the cow that won supreme champion of the Clarion County Fair.

“When I go up to meet them, they immediately come up to me … – they’re my babies,” Radaker said.

Art Goodman has been coming to the fair for seven years and shows his six rabbits with his nephew, Lucas Short, 4.

“It’s like an addiction,” Goodman said. “You see one and go to buy one, then you come home with four.”

The rides and the milkshakes are Lucas’s favorites for now, but his uncle hopes that his nephew will grow up to continue the tradition he has started with him.

“The kids really enjoy it,” Goodman said.

In addition to having many animals to look at and learn from, the fair offers an overall experience to the community.

“It’s like a class reunion without even having a class reunion,” Cassie Faulk of New Bethlehem said.

“It still feels like a hometown. You get to see a lot of people you don’t see,” Sherry McCauley of New Bethlehem said. “It brings people together.”

The fair continues all week until Saturday. Multiple tractor pulls, two demolition derbies and more animal events will be held daily.

Republished with permission from The Derrick. 

http://www.thederrick.com/news/front_page/lots-to-do-at-clarion-county-fair-but-it-s/article_6a1bfed5-9500-5d44-a119-05617fe15287.html?success=2

First Published Tuesday, July 28, 2015

“Everyone has someone who has been effected by cancer in some way or another,” Nikita Maglis, Phi Delta Epsilon leader, said. “I could try and motivate people as much as I can but at the end of the day it depends on the member, they decide how much they want to do it. How much they can connect with that and how inspired they can be to raise money.”

Student organizations at Kent State University formed 53 teams and are inspired to fundraise for Relay For Life.

“One of our members her mom just passed away from cancer so she had a lot of people that wanted to donate for her,” PJ Kimmel, Kent Student Ambassadors leader, said. “I would say that was our inspiration, I think we all really wanted to support her and be there for her and that was a big driver for us.”

Kent Student Ambassadors raised $7,520.03 and is the top fundraiser for Relay For Life. Kimmel said he started preparing for Relay back in Dec. when he started asking members to sign up. Kimmel works at making sure everyone signs up, gets involved, and fundraises for the event.

“Then another guy who is not actually a Kent Ambassadors but is friends with one of our members donated I think like $2,000 to us,” Kimmel said. “He says he did it because Relay isn’t in his community anymore and a lot of people just donate to him since it’s not there anymore.”

The 53 out of the 59 teams came together at Kent State University were student organizations. Each organization contributed to the $65,179.34 raised for the American Cancer Society.

Maglis is the leader for Phi Delta Epsilon Medical Fraternity and Knauer is the leader for the PRSSA chapter at Kent State. Phi Delta Epsilon raised $680 while PRSSA raised $1,539.

“We [PRSSA] have always participated in relay for life because we want to get our name out there and it is also a really good way to get those donations and raise money,” Amanda Knauer said. “It is something nice for our chapter to give back, I hope we keep doing better in years to come.”

Maglis and Knauer said the main fundraising approach for PRSSA and Phi Delta Epsilon is through social media and with the family and friend donations.

“Social media makes it so easy, I had family and friends from across the country help and donate,” Knauer said. “I think it was amazing and people get really involved.”

Maglis said it is hard to fundraise outside of social media because it requires dedication and time of the members involved. He said he doesn’t see the profit outweigh the time spent doing alternative fundraising activities.

“I set the goal at $1,500, it just didn’t happen. I’m not really sure why,” Maglis said. “Last year I forget what the goal was but it was over a thousand dollars. We reached it, but then we had a couple of members reach $300 alone on their own so that alone got us close to our goal. This year no one raised that much money.”

Kent State organizations join the fight against cancer by raising money and finding their inspiration to help find a cure for cancer.

“I enjoy how almost the whole campus come together for this event, for this good cause, a lot of the Kent State organizations come together and raise money for this event and the whole idea of it is very exciting and rewarding,” Maglis said.

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For more information:

https://ksurelay2015.wordpress.com

https://storify.com/lkober/relay-for-life-the-kent-state-student-team-perspec

“You Belong Here” is something seen a lot while on the Kent State University campus. Students know how they got “here,” but what they do not know is what students had to do in order to come to Kent State.

“It was difficult just because I changed my environment. Not like school wise; actually I’m thinking things are a lot easier here and more organized. There were some things of course, it being too organized,” Akbay said. “We didn’t have that much homework in Turkey, I guess it was more like you should know your own stuff, you don’t have to read, like here they make sure you read it.”

Kent State University graduate students Ece Akbay and Shakhnoza Yakubova came to United States in order to complete another degree. Both women spoke about exams every student must take in their homelands and the pressure it is to pass them in order to have the opportunity, like they did, to come to Kent and get a higher education.

“[In] college we again have public and private; there is a national admissions test conducted by a third party during a week or two in certain locations offered to public and at national universities,” Yakubova said. “[There are] grants for public and private universities, the higher you score in the test the more possibility you have of getting like full funded grant for your education.”

“You could only take [the test] one time, you make a list of schools you want to go to so you already know where your applying,” Akbay said. “Then you get your scores and they match you depending on your score or percentage.”

Akbay explains she had 12 choices for schools she wanted to go to. 11 of the schools were psychology in order to begin her career as a councilor. One choice was philosophy. Her score determined that she studied philosophy as an undergrad instead of counseling like she hoped.

“A lot of students prefer to go to college; it is very competitive. If you’re coming from a rural area, your score requirement may be a little lower because the quality and accessibility to resources maybe a little different. So they take [that] into account…they don’t assess you the same as a city [school],” Yakubova said. “We recognize there is a difference between village and city. Urban verses rural there is little difference in the score, for example, if in a city school is supposed to keep 90% to get a government grant, a village would be like an 85%.”

Akbay and Yakubova each said their families supported them while trying to get an education but they still felt incredible pressure to succeed.

“I think I was raised in a place where education was big, and it was the thing to do, to get the best for their kids,” Akbay said. “In some rural areas, families maybe be less willing to send their girls, which is a big problem especially in like eastern part of Turkey. But there is a lot of campaigns to you know send girls to school like a lot of stuff that’s going on I think it has improved. But for boys too sometimes because families they just want them to stay and do the farm thing or taking care of the family and start making money.”

Although U.S students have to take entrance exams in order to be accepted into college, however, the amount of anxiety students feel in the United States to go to college is far less verses other countries similar to Turkey and Kazakhstan.

“The last ten days, this period, before I take the test I remember having nightmares and anxiety because it’s your life,” Akbay said. “I was thinking, would I be doing something, will I be able to go to school, what will I be doing if I cant get into a university, like crazy things, just imagine the pressure, I mean yeah that’s the biggest difference I think.”

“Both parents had a college degrees and then I remember being raised that I knew I was going to college, it wasn’t like do I go or not,” said Yakubova.

Akbay is studying at Kent for a master’s degree in counseling. In Turkey she received her primary and secondary education, along with a bachelor degree in philosophy. She came to Kent State because she said Kent State is well known in Turkey and is accredited with the degree she hopes to obtain.

Shakhnoza Yakubova is a student from Kazakhstan studying at Kent State University. She is a graduate student getting her PH.D in higher education and administration in hopes to go back home and work on Kazakhstan’s educational reform.

Info Graphic Stats: http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/Turkey_statistics.htm

http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/kazakhstan_statistics.html

Turkey Education:
Youth (15-24 years) literacy rate (%) 2008-2012*, male	99.4
Youth (15-24 years) literacy rate (%) 2008-2012*, female	97.9
Number per 100 population 2012, mobile phones	90.8
Number per 100 population 2012, Internet users	45.1
Pre-primary school participation, Gross enrolment ratio (%) 2008 -2012*, male	26.9
Pre-primary school participation, Gross enrolment ratio (%) 2008 -2012*, female	25.8
Primary school participation, Gross enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	104.9
Primary school participation, Gross enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	103.7
Primary school participation, Net enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	99.5
Primary school participation, Net enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	98.3
Primary school participation, Net attendance ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	93.5
Primary school participation, Net attendance ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	91.9
Primary school participation, Survival rate to last primary grade (%) , 2008-2012*, admin. data	99.2
Primary school participation, Survival rate to last primary grade (%) , 2008-2012*, survey data	94.5
Secondary school participation, Net enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	81.4
Secondary school participation, Net enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	76.2
Secondary school participation, Net attendance ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	51.6
Secondary school participation, Net attendance ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	43
Youth (15-24 years) literacy rate (%) 2008-2012*, male	99.4
Youth (15-24 years) literacy rate (%) 2008-2012*, female	97.9
Number per 100 population 2012, mobile phones	90.8
Number per 100 population 2012, Internet users	45.1
Pre-primary school participation, Gross enrolment ratio (%) 2008 -2012*, male	26.9
Pre-primary school participation, Gross enrolment ratio (%) 2008 -2012*, female	25.8
Primary school participation, Gross enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	104.9
Primary school participation, Gross enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	103.7
Primary school participation, Net enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	99.5
Primary school participation, Net enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	98.3
Primary school participation, Net attendance ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	93.5
Primary school participation, Net attendance ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	91.9
Primary school participation, Survival rate to last primary grade (%) , 2008-2012*, admin. data	99.2
Primary school participation, Survival rate to last primary grade (%) , 2008-2012*, survey data	94.5
Secondary school participation, Net enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	81.4
Secondary school participation, Net enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	76.2
Secondary school participation, Net attendance ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	51.6
Secondary school participation, Net attendance ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	43

Kazakhstan Education:
Youth (15-24 years) literacy rate (%) 2008-2012*, male	99.8
Youth (15-24 years) literacy rate (%) 2008-2012*, female	99.9
Number per 100 population 2012, mobile phones	175.4
Number per 100 population 2012, Internet users	53.3
Pre-primary school participation, Gross enrolment ratio (%) 2008 -2012*, male	48
Pre-primary school participation, Gross enrolment ratio (%) 2008 -2012*, female	47.4
Primary school participation, Gross enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	110.7
Primary school participation, Gross enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	110.7
Primary school participation, Net enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	99.4
Primary school participation, Net enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	99.7
Primary school participation, Net attendance ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	99.3
Primary school participation, Net attendance ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	99.4
Primary school participation, Survival rate to last primary grade (%) , 2008-2012*, admin. data	99.6
Primary school participation, Survival rate to last primary grade (%) , 2008-2012*, survey data	100
Secondary school participation, Net enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	89.9
Secondary school participation, Net enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	89.2
Secondary school participation, Net attendance ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	96
Secondary school participation, Net attendance ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	96.2
Youth (15-24 years) literacy rate (%) 2008-2012*, male	99.8
Youth (15-24 years) literacy rate (%) 2008-2012*, female	99.9
Number per 100 population 2012, mobile phones	175.4
Number per 100 population 2012, Internet users	53.3
Pre-primary school participation, Gross enrolment ratio (%) 2008 -2012*, male	48
Pre-primary school participation, Gross enrolment ratio (%) 2008 -2012*, female	47.4
Primary school participation, Gross enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	110.7
Primary school participation, Gross enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	110.7
Primary school participation, Net enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	99.4
Primary school participation, Net enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	99.7
Primary school participation, Net attendance ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	99.3
Primary school participation, Net attendance ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	99.4
Primary school participation, Survival rate to last primary grade (%) , 2008-2012*, admin. data	99.6
Primary school participation, Survival rate to last primary grade (%) , 2008-2012*, survey data	100
Secondary school participation, Net enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	89.9
Secondary school participation, Net enrolment ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	89.2
Secondary school participation, Net attendance ratio (%) 2008-2012*, male	96
Secondary school participation, Net attendance ratio (%) 2008-2012*, female	96.2

 

Audience members are empowered after Clarence Bozeman, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s former driver, sends a message to Kent State students during his speech on campus.

“Everybody can be great,” Bozeman said, “because anyone can serve.”

The tall, African American, man dressed in a light tan suite stood before 75 to 100 audience members consisting of mostly Kent State students on Wednesday March 4 to talk about his experiences in the 1960’s serving as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s driver. However, Bozeman did more than just reenact the civil rights movement and tell stories about his past; he motivated and gave a message about serving to students.

“You don’t have to have a college degree to serve, you don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve; you don’t have to know about Plato or Aristotle to serve, you don’t have to know the Second Theory of Relativity in physics to serve,” Bozeman said, “ you only need a heart full of grace and a soul that is generated by love.”

Bozeman became a knowledgeable eyewitness to the civil rights movement when his dean at Alabama State University chose him to be Dr. King’s Sunday morning driver. He drove Dr. King and his wife in the church station wagon, the same station wagon used during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, for six dollars a week while he attended Alabama State.

“I thought it was really inspiring,” said, KSU freshman, Maria Kuhn, “it was just really cool seeing a part of history live in person.”

Throughout the hour speech, Bozeman described and characterized many events he lived through during his young adulthood. With his words, he revealed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s true identity and the struggles of African Americans in the 1960’s.

“I just thought he did a wonderful presentation,” said Dr. Rebecca Ann Zurava.

Zurava is a Kent State alumni and a local resident who has been interested in the civil rights movement since she moved to the United States as a military child in the 1960’s. She said she came to watch Bozeman’s speech because she likes to study a lot about it and try to realize her own history.

Bozeman tells the audience a story about one of his car conversations with Dr. King that he will always remember after a sermon one day. He said he asked Dr. King about forgiveness, and how he could forgive people after all of the things that have happened.

“Dr. King said, ‘Forgiveness is not always for the other fella,’” Bozeman said, “and I took that to heart.”

Clarence Bozeman took the audience in the past with the memories and stories he shared, but more importantly he created inspiration and empowerment with his uplifting messages.

“I want you to always remember Kent,” said Bozeman, “don’t quit, just keep playing.”