By By MIKELL FREY / Niles Daily Star
On Saturday the Multicultural Involvement Council of Niles will be sponsoring a Fresh Start Benefit Concert for anyone interested in gospel music, good times and lots and lots of pies.
All proceeds from the night will go towards helping the Fresh Start Program, which was founded in 1994, as a restorative educational program responsible for returning at risk students from the Berrien County area to the public school system.
The event will kick off at 7 p.m. in the Michiana Christian Embassy's church sanctuary with performances by the Benton Harbor based Union Gospel Singers, the church's group, Joyful Noize and the Niles High School Counterpoints.
A talk by Earlean Watts, former student in the program who graduated in 2004, is also planned, and the six kids currently enrolled in Head Start will do their part in working as ushers and hosts for the event.
The church sanctuary can seat 800 to 1,000 people on both the ground level and in the balconies, and the group hopes to pack the house.
McAfee and her family began the Fresh Start Program back in 1994, after Michigan Public Act 328 was passed, stating that any student who posed any kind of a threat to their school, teacher or another student could be expelled for an extended amount of time. McAfee and her family began the educational program out of their pockets in order to provide these expelled students with an opportunity to continue learning while out of the public school system.
The Fresh Start Program provides expelled students with a chance to not only learn through a stuctured curriculum program, but to work on fixing the mistakes they may have made in the past. The teachers frequently hold round table discussions with the kids, in which they role play situations where they may have reacted wrongly in the past, and help guide them to work on their errors.
McAfee credits Pastor Jeffrey Whittaker, who is also on the program's board of directors, with helping to plan the concert since the board's initial idea to have a concert five months ago.
After the concert is finished, the crowd will be invited to a dessert buffet and pie auction in the fellowship hall of the Michiana Christian Embassy building.
An invitation is extended to anyone within the community who would like to support the program through a night of gospel tunes and lots of fun. Proceeds from the pie auction and free will offerings at the concert will go towards the Fresh Start Program and its future.