And The Beat Goes On

Linda Burton posting from Salem, Oregon – Get Mom on it. Make that two moms with young daughters, who are determined to make something good out of something bad. Start with a gem of an idea, stir in 15 years of innovative thinking and hardworking community volunteering, and what do you have? A success story, that’s what, in the form of the Salem Multicultural Institute, gearing up for another big festival on the last weekend of this month. What started out as a poster paper sketch in 1997 is now Oregon’s largest multicultural event. It has won numerous awards, engages over a thousand volunteers, welcomes over 33,000 visitors, and continues to grow. Those two moms, Kathleen Fish and Mona Hayes, simply wanted to form a positive response to incidents of racial intolerance in Salem. » read more