A new event at the Middle School—the Ludo Festival—met the same energy and excitement in celebrating international diversity at the Bromfield School as the Festival of Cultures, now in its fourth year at Hildreth Elementary School. (Watch for it March 11!)
The Ludo Festival Committee would like to thank PTO President Koralia Frankin for encouraging the new event at Bromfield and for offering the Harvard PTO as the first sponsor of the event. Thanks to Principal O’Shea for embracing the Ludo, and appointing great committee members, Mrs. Dyer (7th-grade social studies teacher) and Ms. Mattie (10th-grade world history teacher and Model U.N. advisor). Thanks to Chef Paul for giving a “green light” to food, and for sharing Bromfield’s kitchen with 14 ambassadors cooking with his tools, pushed around in schedule by a snowstorm. Thanks to Ms. Chandler for her idea to include the Martin Luther King holiday, and for her vision and student support, which added art to the evening. We thank Sue Silver and the Middle School Student Council for their help in publicity and ideas to enhance the evening; 11th-grader Bernadette Stadler, for her amazing design of the Ludo logo; local businesses and For Art’s Sake for funding the origami ornament area; and Harvard Academy of Dance for bringing Latin dance to the evening.
We thank the volunteers, a vital resource that these events depend upon: Valerie Into, for her online recipe work and program development; Joyce Grant, for her online website help; Mary Krause, for her amazing charge of the kitchen; MUN and NHS student volunteers and parents who stepped up as international ambassadors representing more than 25 countries; general volunteers who helped serve food, helped with admissions and setup and take-down; and the grounds and building staff.
Finally, we are grateful for the many donations from local vendors, and the third sponsor, UMass Memorial Medical Group, which just opened a practice in Harvard, with one of our ambassadors, Carmen Al-Homsi as one of their medical providers.
Thank-you to this community for meeting international celebration with such a passion. Go to www.harvardpto.org for recipes and details from the evening. Thanks for the start of a new tradition.
Belinda Abouaf Friedrich
Littleton Road
