PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 13, 2013 – After engaging more than 500 children during his third annual “Summer of Peace” event throughout the 8th Senate District in the past few months, Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams closed the successful season by leading a back-to-school drive and helping to replace equipment stolen from the Penn Wood High School football team.

“We now bring the ‘Summer of Peace’ every year because we all need to be reminded that we live together, we work together, and we are a family together,” Williams said. “It’s an important message because it helps us to remember that when trouble sparks we have better alternatives than violence when solving our immediate problems.”

The senator’s back-to-school drive resulted in the delivery of 52 backpacks stuffed with school and tennis supplies for the new school year. The United States Tennis Association (USTA), Yeadon Borough, the Yeadon Public Library and the William Penn School District sponsored the back-to-school effort.

During halftime of the Penn Wood-Bishop Shanahan football game, Sen. Williams delivered $500 to Penn Wood administrators to help the high school cover its insurance policy deductible and pay to replace stolen football helmets, shoulder pads and other equipment.

Williams said the money — $100 of which is from the 700 Block of Church Lane Business Association and $400 is a pledge from the senator — represents a village’s efforts to help neighbors.

“Because we worked and played together this summer, and reminded each other of the good we can do when we do all of that, we raised the $500 to help a great school and a deserving football team,” Williams said.

As he did in “Summer of Peace” days at the Francis Myers Recreation Center, Smith Playground, Nile Swim Club, Eastwick Park, Vare Recreation Center, along the Cobbs Creek Parkway in West Philly, and on Sept. 7 at Clark Park, Williams presented another “Family Fun Day” that offered children the chance to get to know each other through games, face painting and arts & crafts.

Hundreds of participants happily munched on free popcorn, cotton candy and water ice as they actively strolled through Clark Park on Chester Avenue and participated in events.

Proving he is an all-encompassing lawmaker for the 8th Senate District, Williams expressed his support later in the day for the construction of a radio station in the Quardu-Gboni District of Northern Liberia. That debate happened at the African Cultural Center on Springfield Avenue.

The district is one of more than 120 new local governments in the Republic of Liberia. Despite its population of some 50,000 people, the Guardu-Gboni District still does not have a hospital, a high school, supermarket, police station, courthouse or radio station.

The lack of these common democratic institutions is believed to be impeding the growth of Quardu-Gboni, Williams said.

“Where there is an information vacuum, democracy suffers,” the senator said in support of the Quardu-Gboni Mandingo Association in the Americas’ effort to raise $50,000 for the radio station project.

Rep. Ronald G. Waters; Dr. Molefi Kete Asante, chair of the Department of African American Studies at Temple University; W. Cody Anderson, president/CEO of ACG Associates Public Relations; Dr. Diane D. Turner, curator of the Charles L. Blockson Afro-American Collection, Temple University Libraries; and Justice Karbineh Ja’neh, associate justice of the Supreme Court of the Republic of Liberia participated in the discussion about the district’s radio station and the situation in Northern Liberia.

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