Many Voices

If you are looking for something fun and entertaining to do next Sunday afternoon, I urge you to bring your friends and family to Darlington’s Huffman Athletic Center for the third annual Many Voices concert. As in years past, we are hosting this event as part of the community’s One Book/Many Voices reading initiative, which is designed to bring the community together through the reading of one great book.

One Book/Many Voices has brought renowned authors like Sherman Alexie and Maya Angelou to our community. This year, we are focusing on another great story, Paul Rusesabagina’s “An Ordinary Man,” which was the basis of the Academy Award-nominated film “Hotel Rwanda.” Rusesabagina will speak at Berry College’s Cage Center at 7 p.m. on Sept. 29, and a limited number of tickets are still available at Sara Hightower Regional Library in Rome.

The Many Voices concert will celebrate the diversity of our community with featured performances by Darlington’s Concert Choir and Middle School Chorus as well as the Boys & Girls Club Choir, the Just As I Am Choir and the Thankful Baptist Church Choir. Admission is free, but donations will be accepted. All proceeds will directly benefit our neighboring youth in South Rome.

I just want to say that I am so proud of our school community for getting involved in initiatives like this one. It is important for our students to learn that they are a part of something much greater than our student body – they are members of a world community. By giving their time and talent to this event, they are showing others that they not only support the literacy goals of One Book/Many Voices, but that they support our community as a whole. And that is a great thing.

We hope those of you who are nearby will join us at the Huffman Center Sept. 27 at 4 p.m. for this very special concert; you won’t want to miss it!

In closing, I just want to mention a few outstanding student successes that have been announced this week. Darlington has two National Merit Scholarship semifinalists, 60 AP Scholars and 38 students who qualified for awards through the school’s merit scholarship program. Please visit our homepage for more information on these and other news items.

Tom