Saturday’s Faith Summit of the Vance County Coalition Against Violence will kick off a series of events that attack the crime problem from different directions.
“It looks like we’re doing a whole violence week,” Donna Stearns, who works in youth services for Henderson, said during Wednesday‘s meeting of the Vance Organization to Implement Community Excellence.
That week begins Saturday morning at 8 with the Vance County Faith Summit, whose theme comes from Scripture, “Laying Aside Every Weight.”
“It is about brining the faith community together so that we together can come up with solutions in the church and in other faith groups to end the violence in our community,” the Rev. Sheila Kingsberry-Burt told a small-business workshop Thursday night as part of the effort to spread the word about the forum.
All of the day’s events will be at First Presbyterian Church, 222 Young St., and that church’s pastor, the Rev. Rick Brand, will be the day’s first featured speaker.
Brand will speak during breakfast, which starts at 8. The Rev. Todd Hester, the pastor of Cotton Memorial Presbyterian Church, will be the lunch speaker. The Coalition Against Violence will serve both meals as part of the free program.
“The area’s pastors must become active in the community,” the Rev. William Clayton, one of the Faith Summit’s organizers, said at a coalition meeting March 31.
Clayton, who leads St. James Baptist Church, said churches had to overcome a feeling of competition to hold the summit. An unwillingness among churches to give up their normal Sunday worship services led the coalition to make the Faith Summit a one-day event instead of holding sessions on Saturday and Sunday.
“I’ve had some struggles in Vance County getting the faith community together on anything the past few years,” Clayton told the coalition last month.
Loree Adams, who represents the coalition in VOICE, said Wednesday that the goal of the Faith Summit is to bring together people from as many churches as possible, black and white, to confront Vance County’s violence.
The summit will feature two panel discussions. The morning discussion will address the state of Vance County. The afternoon discussion will feature ministers and their responses to violence.
“The coalition is fortunate to have such strong church involvement,” Adams said.
“The faith community is absolutely essential,” City Manager Eric Williams added during the VOICE meeting.
The Saturday summit also will involve breakout workshops for participants. Everything will come to an end by 3:30 to give people a chance to rest before the interfaith worship service at 6 p.m.
The Rev. William Barber, pastor of Greenleaf Christian Church in Wilson, will be the guest speaker for that service. The Vance County Interfaith Chorus, directed by the Rev. Ralph Burroughs, will provide the music.
Kingsberry-Burt said Barber is an activist and “an outstanding deliverer of timely messages.”
Also renowned for their excellent delivery are two members of the Durham Police Department‘s gang investigations unit, Sgt. Howard Alexander and Cpl. V.B. Pearsall. They will make a return appearance in Henderson on Wednesday as part of the Gang Awareness Series organized by the Juvenile Crime Prevention Council.
“You talk about street-savvy, these guys do it,” Williams told this week’s VOICE meeting.
Wednesday’s gang session will run from 9 a.m. to noon at the Aycock Recreation Complex.
The first part of the program will feature the Durham officers discussing Hispanic gangs, a problem that Williams said is naturally growing in proportion to the expansion of the Hispanic population in Vance County and across the state.
The second part of Wednesday’s program will be a panel discussion on what the next steps should be in resisting the spread of gangs in Vance.
The following Saturday, April 30, the Aycock center will play host to one such effort to turn youths away from crime and gangs.
The Vance County Arts Council and the Coalition Against Violence will present a free program featuring the Blackout Arts Collective, a Washington-based spoken-word performance group. One member of the group is Heather Kenney, daughter of a Henderson doctor, James Kenney.
Blackout not only performs its own work, but brings the audience into the show. Teens will get encouragement to create and deliver their spoken-word presentations.
Aside from Blackout, which should perform about 3 p.m., the afternoon will showcase the Pinkston Street Steppers, the Warren County High School Steel Stix and the winners of the youth art show that will be displayed at the Gateway Center starting Monday. Riding the anti-violence momentum of the week, the themes for the art show are “All You Need Is Love” for children in elementary school and “Stop the Violence” at the secondary school level.
The artists won’t be the only winners announced at the Aycock center that day. Several participants will receive door prizes, including cash and free tuition to Vance County Schools’ summer fun program, and the group or club with the largest attendance will win a pizza party.
“We’re trying to get as many young people out as we can,” said Marolyn Rasheed, who organized the event with Arts Council Executive Director Jennifer Madriaga.
Rasheed said Logan Darensburg has agreed to broadcast interviews of participants from Aycock on his Warrenton-based radio station, WARR-AM (1520).
The doors open at 2 p.m. for the Blackout festival.
“Y’all are doing a really splendid job at identifying and organizing educational and awareness events,” Williams told Coalition Against Violence members at the VOICE meeting Wednesday. “Congratulations.”