This page is no longer being updated and remains online for informational and historical purposes only. The information is accurate as of the last page update.
For questions about page contents, contact the Communications Division.
Pards to People, one of the College’s newest student organizations, has been very busy this semester forming connections between Lafayette and Easton.
The group is a chapter of People to People International, which was founded in 1956 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower with the mission of advancing an international “peace through understanding” by direct people-to-people contact.
The fifteen members of Pards to People have been hard at work promoting this mission in the Lafayette and Easton community.
“I volunteer at the Easton Senior Center each week and the seniors always ask me how Lafayette is doing,” says Alan Raisman ’10 (Huntingdon Valley, Pa.), president of Pards to People. “I think many members of the Easton community don’t know much about Lafayette, and we as a campus don’t know much about the city we live in. [Pards to People] wants to bring our two communities together.”
Two days after Valentine’s Day, group members handed out carnations throughout Easton as a way of introducing themselves to members of the community. They delivered about 80 carnations to people at the senior center, the woman’s shelter at the Third Street Alliance, officers at the Easton Police Department, and numerous businesses.
Though, according to Raisman, the organization plans to go much further than simple introductions.
Pards to People has applied for a grant from 100 Projects for Peace through the Davis United World College Scholars Program. Funded by Kathryn Wasserman Davis, the program will be giving $10,000 awards to 100 student-designed grassroots projects from organizations at any of the 76 American colleges and universities who are members of the Davis United World network.
If Pards to People receives the grant, it will fund a project called “Community Connections,” which will take place in August. Raisman says, the project will help to ease the transition of the relocation of almost 250 Easton families living in the Delaware Terrace public housing development.
In October 2006, Easton was awarded a $20 million HOPE VI Revitalization grant from the U.S. Housing and Urban Development. The funding will be used to redevelop Delaware Terrace and the residents need to be relocated while the project is under construction.
Raisman says Community Connections is a way for the residents and their future neighbors to get to know each other.
“We will be bringing the residents of the West Ward and the South Side together to tell their stories about their lives in Easton,” says Raisman. “The people of Easton, along with students at Lafayette, will create an enlarged map of Easton. Here, residents of the West Ward and the South Side can locate their homes and put up pictures, letters, or anything that will tell their story. On the final day, we will bring everyone together to tell their story and hopefully build a better connection between the West Ward and the South Side by means of understanding one another.”
In April, Pards to People is also planning to make connections between the College and the Easton Senior Center with a brown bag discussion on World War II. Raisman is working with the center to bring some of the seniors to campus to talk about their lives during the war. Along with American WWII veterans, Raisman say a British woman, who was in England during the war, and a Japanese woman, who was in an internment camp during the war, also attend the center.
In addition to Raisman, Pards to People officers include vice president Kyle deCant ’10 (Orange, Conn.), secretary Lindsey Greenfield ’10 (Staten Island, N.Y.), and treasurer Devin Prowell ’10 (Landing, N.J.). For more information on Pards to People, or to get involved, email Raisman.