Preparing to visit the Jewel of the Delta

I spent yesterday working on the upcoming Historic Preservation Workshop for youth in Mound Bayou on Saturday.  My two colleagues and I, and two students from practice class, will be driving down Saturday morning to spend the afternoon with about 10 youth who signed up.  We will be conducting a series of brief workshops on historic preservation in general, and the significant history of MB, followed by discussion around the 3 remaining historic buildings in MB:

the Isaiah T. Montgomery house, the Bank of Mound Bayou, and the Taborian Hospital.  As we begin our work with the community, one of the things we will be doing is working on fundraising.  This group of students will be doing photography of the local buildings, and we will be teaching them some techniques about looking for details as well as general traditional pictures of the whole building.  We will also be showing them how to do some computer manipulation to make graphic changes to photos.  All of this experimentation will result in some products for the silent auction to benefit the Taborian that will be held in conjunction with our spring conference on cultural diversity, where we will highlight our work in the Delta as well.

Lots of plans coming up for the next few months, and we are so excited to be working with this historic community and its wonderfully welcoming people.  We will finish up Saturday with a brief survey to find out what types of events the students would like to suggest for the future and get them to help us plan for them.  Reminds me of Jane/Gigi and I and the workshops and events we used to do at the Abilene Peace and Justice Center.  There's no such thing as having too much fun!