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“Without love, there is no reason to know anyone,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Is quoted as saying. “For love will, in the end, connect us to our neighbors, our children and our hearts.”

The Farmville community showed that love Monday, Jan. 16, coming together for an MLK Day Family Workshop at the Robert Russa Moton Museum. 

The event was a partnership between the museum, the Longwood Center for Visual Arts (LCVA), the Farmville Lion’s Club, the Virginia Children’s Book Festival and Longwood’s Office of Multicultural Affairs. 

As kids and parents had the day off from school and work, the museum and its partners offered family activities, giving an opportunity to get out of the house and remember what the day is about. 

“The family workshop held in honor of MLK Day was a perfect collaboration,” said LCVA Community Engagement Director Lisa Tharpe. “(We) welcomed more than 177 visitors to the two-hour workshop. The fun-filled morning stayed busy with art projects, crafts, museum tours and fellowship.” 

The Farmville Lion’s Club set up free vision screening stations, working with 75 children during the day. Tharpe said the Lions discovered at least four important optical issues and alerted the parents to have their children tested further by an ophthalmologist. 

The children also didn’t leave empty handed. Courtesy of the Virginia Children’s Book Festival, each one had the opportunity to go home with a new book.