With a focus on Fiscal Fitness, Target 3: Building Your Economic Legacy, the Interest Group kicked off 2019 with an Envelope Challenge, encouraging Sorors to save money. Sorors also received education on credit scores, FICO scores, and essential documents for their personal tool kits. A highlight of the year was partnering with the County to serve as greeters and interviewers for the New Castle County Summer Youth Employment Program.  The Interest Group supported Entrepreneurship, by including Black Businesses as vendors at the Day Party Fundraiser and highlighting the artwork of a local college student/businesswoman. The Interest also used minority owned businesses for catering, entertainment, photography, graphic designing, printing, and publishing.  The Interest Group donated Thanksgiving meals to Brick Mill Elementary and Silver Lake Elementary Schools, for deserving families in the Middletown, Odessa, and Townsend community. Sorors continue to monitor the progress of a college student “aged out” of the foster care system, whom Sorors had adopted in 2018 with purchases of dorm room items and financial support. 

To introduce students to a pivotal period in American history, in 2019, the Interest Group sponsored a Target 4: The Arts! Harlem Renaissance Essay Contest at Redding Middle School. Twenty-five (25) beautifully written and insightful entries were received for consideration.  The Interest Group presented certificates of appreciation to all contestants, and three cash awards were handed out for the stand-out essays. The Interest Group continues to encourage the middle school students of the Appoquinimink School District to learn about the Harlem Renaissance.  This year, 2021, the program was expanded to all three public schools in the district, Alfred G. Waters, Everett Meredith, and Louis L. Redding.  Students were also given the choice of writing an essay or participate in the new category of Spoken Word.  Due to Covid-19, the participation level was lower than in previous years, but the quality of submitted pieces impressed the judges and participants of the award ceremony.  The interest group looks to continue this relationship with the schools, teachers, and students in the district.

A portrait of Harlem Renaissance singer, Billy Holiday, was prominently featured at the entrance of the Fundraiser event.   Middletown Odessa Townsend Pearls of Distinction was pleased to collaborate with the Gamma Theta Lambda Foundation of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated for the presentation of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater: Ailey II, at The Grand Opera House, in Wilmington, Delaware.  The Interest Group was delighted to help raise Arts awareness in the State of Delaware. The day’s activities included three (3) 90-minute Master Classes, one for the visually impaired and blind students, a live show, and a post-show V.I.P. reception. December 2019, Sorors traveled to the Barnes Foundation, for the 10th anniversary presentation of “30 Americans,” an exhibition featuring works by many of the most important and influential African American artists of the past four decades. The racial unrest that soared in 2020 was expressed widely in the arts with films such as Just Mercy based on the social justice path of Bryan Stevenson, a native Delawarean. Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated members held a special showing, at Westown Theater, targeting students throughout the community, and at the same time supporting the movie directed starring African Americans.    AATΩ History (part 4)