Community comes together for We Are One Festival
More than 45 vendors filled the perimeter of Veterans Park creating the perfect setting for hundreds of attendees of this year’s We Are One Festival. Under mostly clear skies people gathered to dance and drum, do group Zumba, sample a variety of foods and catch up with neighbors and friends.
MANCHESTER, NH – More than 45 vendors filled the perimeter of Veterans Park creating the perfect setting for hundreds of attendees of this year’s We Are One Festival. Under mostly clear skies people gathered to dance and drum, do group Zumba, sample a variety of foods and catch up with neighbors and friends.
Sudi Lett, one of the event organizers, credited a group of a dozen or so young people from Young Organizers United (Y.O.U.) for putting in the time and effort to make the event a success.
“I couldn’t even be here right now without them – setting up tents, breaking down tents,” Lett says, dispatching a group of four teens in yellow T-shirts to help move drums from the grass where NH Artist Laureate Theo Martey had just wrapped up leading a huge community drum circle.
Several candidates running for local office were in attendance, and City Clerk Matt Normand said they’d had at least a dozen new voters sign up in the first few hours of the seven-hour festival.
Bukola Adejumo was hard to miss as she made the rounds with her daughter, Victoria, 6, in matching mother-daughter dresses.
New to Manchester, Adejumo said she recently arrived here from Nigeria and was enjoying the sense of community.
She noted that her sister made the dresses, which were full of beautiful detail on top of an eye-catching salmon pink fabric. “We wanted to wear them as much as we can while the weather is still warm,” Adejumo said.
The annual event brings together music, food and culture from the African and Latino communities, and has been a city tradition for more than 20 years.
