The HOPE Festival — an acronym for Help Organize Peace Earthwide — is scheduled to take place at the New Balance Student Recreation Center on Saturday, April 27, from 11 a.m. until 4 p.m. Over 60 organizations will be in attendance, covering a range of issues such as environmental advocacy, LGBT rights, living wages, sustainability, spirituality and grassroots.
“It’s about coming together to say, ‘Look how much good we’re doing and how much good we can do — together,’” said Ilze Petersons, program coordinator at the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine and an organizer for the 19th annual HOPE Festival.
“There’s a lot of good energy and inspiration there, for everyone,” said Dan White, an event organizer and treasurer of the Maine Peace Action Committee.
Festival attendees will also experience live music from Timbered Lake and the Alamoosic Lake Drummers and Singers, an “amazing” juggling performance from Zachary Fields, and a variety of local and organic food vendors.
Special activities will be available for children as well, offered by the Fields Pond Audubon Center, Maine Children’s Discovery Museum, the Windover Arts Center and the Maine Peace Action Committee.
“It’s just great to see all the people from the community, from the university… all the diversity, and they’re all doing such great things,” Petersons said.
The Festival will feature a “Do One Thing,” or “DOT” theme, encouraging attendees with a variety of simple individual actions to be part of the movement toward peace and sustainability. Instead of a single keynote speaker, 12 community members will each take five minutes to share one DOT they believe to be particularly important.
Shannon Brenner, a member of MPAC and one of the 12 keynote speakers, said the goal is to offer “tangible, constructive things that everyone can do in their life.” Brenner said she will use her DOT to encourage people “to introduce yourself to a neighbor.
“There are so many resources within our communities,” she said. “And it’s very important to build connections with the people around us.”
Organizations taking part in the Festival will also share DOTs of their own, and attendees will be able to add to a Wall of HOPE showcasing the many steps that can be taken in the spirit of the Festival.
The event will be dedicated to Penobscot Elder Arnie Neptune, who opened the festival with a blessing every year until he died last year.
According to Petersons, the first HOPE Festival was held in 1995 at what is now the University of Maine at Augusta-Bangor Campus, and featured Helen Nearing, a renowned author and homesteader, who spoke about simple living.
As the festival has grown through the years, it has been held in a variety of locations — the Brewer Auditorium, the University of Maine Field House, and now its current home, the New Balance Student Recreation Center.
Past festivals have featured speakers such as folk singer-songwriters David Mallet and Noel Paul Stookey and environmentalist Bill McKibben.
This year, the festival is co-sponsored by the Peace and Reconciliation Studies Department at the University of Maine, the Women in Curriculum/Women’s Studies Program and the Maine Peace Action Committee.