GREENFIELD, Ind. (AP) - If there were a cake to be had, it would need 186 candles on it for Hancock County’s birthday this weekend.
The county’s 186th birthday is Saturday, and students throughout the county have been celebrating the occasion this week.
For the past four years, the Hancock County Community Foundation has used the county’s birthday as an opportunity to teach children not only about the place where they live but supporting their home county through philanthropy.
The celebration is planned and executed by the foundation’s youth board, which is comprised of students and administrators from each of the county’s high schools.
This week, youth board members visited schoolchildren throughout the county to educate students on not only the county birthday but important moments in local history.
At such a young age, many in their audience know little about Hancock County. Many aren’t even sure if it’s a place or a person, Greenfield-Central High School freshman Maddie Wise, who gave presentations this week, told the Daily Reporter (https://bit.ly/1d1fzyV ).
But occasionally, a youngster surprises them. When Maddie quizzed a group of Maxwell Intermediate School students this week about the location of an explosion in 1906 that damaged the county’s original town hall, a boy immediately raised his hand with the correct answer: New Palestine.
“He told me he knew the answer,” Wise said. “I was pretty impressed.”
Marci Atkinson, a third-grader at Weston Elementary School, which Maddie visited Thursday, knew more than most about Hancock County.
“We live inside it, and we have big schools,” the 9-year-old said.
Kaitey Sosnowski, a Greenfield-Central junior, said she hoped to build on students’ existing knowledge of their home while getting them excited about the birthday tradition.
“It’s where we grew up; it’s our heritage,” Kaitey said.
At the heart of the county birthday lesson (and on every celebration T-shirt) is the Hancock County flag - created in 2004 as a project for Leadership Hancock County - which bears a graphic representation of the county courthouse and the county’s founding date of 1828.
The flag’s green and yellow colors symbolize the county’s agricultural heritage. A green area in the flag’s upper left references the city of Greenfield, the county’s largest community, while a diagonal white stripe symbolizes U.S. 40 - originally the National Road - and its importance to the development of the county. A large centered white disk symbolizes progress and prosperity, while the flag’s nine gold stars symbolize the county’s nine townships, according to the community foundation.
This year’s campaign is also commemorated with “186 Acts of Celebrating the Spirit of Community,” a challenge to local educators to submit stories and pictures about their students’ good deeds.
Those stories are being posted to the community foundation’s Facebook page to inspire others, said Michelle Leonard, youth coordinator for the community foundation.
“It’s important for those students to understand .. you don’t have to be wealthy to be a philanthropist,” Leonard said. “If that is giving your time and volunteerism, that is just as important . as if you had millions of dollars.”
This year’s celebration is also marked by a special gift. Each of the county’s four public school foundations has received $500 from the community foundation. That money may be distributed to the schools through a grant process.
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Information from: (Greenfield) Daily Reporter, https://www.greenfieldreporter.com
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