VCSU’s Earth Day Festival tonight

This week — more so than the other 51 weeks out of the year — is a conscious reminder for everyone to be environmentally friendly through the celebration of Earth Week.

Valley City (N.D.) State University is promoting environmental awareness tonight with its inaugural VCSU Earth Day Festival.

The festival is free to the public will be held at Medicine Wheel Park on Winter Show Road in Valley City but will be relocated to the VCSU Student Center in case of inclement weather.

Vendor booths will showcase environmentally friendly products and ideas, games with prizes will be held for attendees of all ages and musical performances will provide entertainment for a crowd of “go green” enthusiasts.

Fourteen vendors are expected tonight, according to Rhonda Fairfield, festival coordinator and assistant to the president at VCSU.

“There will be a wide array of vendors and informational sessions to enjoy,” she said. “Everything from gardening and farming to natural hair and makeup as well as food samples that will be served with compostable products that we’ll show you how to properly dispose of.”

The concept for this inaugural festival came due to efforts from the VCSU Environmental Task Force, led by faculty adviser Dr. Bob Anderson and student director Diana Forsberg.

The task force, which is helping with the event along with VCSU volunteers, was looking to extend its recycling projects on campus in addition to educating a wider range of people about protecting the environment.

“We just started building interest for ideas around here to promote health for our Earth,” said Diana Forsberg, VCSU junior and member of the task force.

“The whole goal here is to start getting people thinking about what we can do to protect our Earth and start getting them to make small, practical changes in their lives to help with that,” she said.

Earth Day was recognized nationwide Sunday, marking the 42nd straight year celebrating the event since its inauguration on April 22, 1970. As an expansion of celebrating just one day a year, the tradition of Earth Week has begun in conjunction with it.

Young people coming together for festivals such as the one at VCSU inspires the movement for increased environmental awareness, said Franklin Russell, director of the Earth Day Network (EDN) out of Washington, D.C.

“Having student involvement is a pivotal part of building a network of support for the environment,” he said.

EDN works with more than 22,000 partners to promote the environment including companies such as NASA and the Peace Corps as well as colleges and universities in 192 countries. Russell said it has been great to see the number of communities doing their part for the cause.

“Everything from tree planting to service cleanup projects to watching environmentally-educating videos — it’s been quite amazing to see,” Russell said.

The VCSU festival will also play host to games and music entertainment.

Fairfield said there will be environmentally-friendly prizes awarded in games such as a bean bag toss, ladder toss and a three-legged race for all age groups.

Four music groups including the VCSU music faculty and VCSU Quantum Brass will play half-hour long sets each prior to the headline performance from Grammy-nominated Native American musical group Lakota Thunder.

The festival begins at 6 p.m. and Lakota Thunder takes the stage at 8 p.m. Telescopes will be set up for planet and star gazing at 8:30 p.m.

For more information, contact Fairfield at 701-845-7102 or visit www.vcsu.edu.

Sun reporter Brian Willhide can be reached at 701-952-8454 or by email at bwill hide@jamestownsun.com

Tags: local news, news, earth, ecology