Village Park Holiday Wrap-up

The holidays were a busy time at Village Park in Kannapolis again this year. More than 6100 people bought tickets for either the Santa Train or Winterland Express. This is a jump of 4000 from last year.

An estimated 500 attended the tree lighting (mark you calendars for Dec. 4, 2010 for another parade/tree lighting combo) where performances were given by the A.L. Brown Marching Wonders, the Piedmont Singing Men, and the Choral Academy.

Best of all (in my humble opinion) the lights in the park were spectacular. Check out the pictures below. Have ideas for December in Village Park? Drop me a line or feel free to leave a comment.

Kannapolis Parade Winnings Fund African Service Project

Sometimes in this gig you hear some really great stories of community groups doing wonderful things. It’s one of the best parts of my job. I hope I’m not going to embarrass anyone, but you’ve got to check out the email sent to Becky Tolle, our events coordinator.

Hi Ms. Tolle…

I just wanted to share with your parade committee the use of the prize money awarded to Beholdance.  We received second place in the Civic category for both the Kannapolis and Concord parades.  We are using that $400 to help 165 children in Africa.  I spoke with Ron Davis, who is the CEO of the YMCA, and part of a group called Umbono that helps people in Africa and he shared that they have 3 pre-schools with children in need.  We, Beholdance, spoke about this and agreed to use the money to purchase vitamins for their pre-school children.  We were also lucky enough to reach Tim Morley at Cannon Pharmacy and he gave us a deal on the vitamins for this outreach mission and even donated an additional 25 bottles.   This will help those children have better nutrition for a 100 days.  We were able to get every child a bottle of 100 tablets.  Beholdance is going to continue to work on this project and try to cover the year.

I am thankful for the parade because it gave us an opportunity to reach others with our environmental message as well as help children in need.

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to make a difference and to have a lot of fun.

Heart blessings…
Dakota Palacio
Beholdance Founder

Beholdance is a group of children that does various volunteer activities from litter sweeps to storm drain marking to other activities that help foster a better environment here locally. Here is their website if you’d like to learn more about them www.beholdance.org.

The award-winning float.

Bring Toy Donations to Christmas Parade

Be sure to bring a toy to donate to this year’s Christmas Parade, which will be held on Saturday. Toys are being collected by Toys for Tots, and Marines will be walking the parade route gathering donations. All toys will be used locally by the Cannon YMCA Empty Stocking and Cooperative Christian Ministries.