PERFORMANCE AND COMMUNITY SERVICE - An international performance group is coming to Shreveport next week. Up With People is made up of young performers from several different countries. They sing and dance on stage but they also perform community service in the cities they visit. . They'll perform live in the Centenary Gold Dome on September 28th. The 100 castmembers will need places to stay and the advance team has been in town already making those arrangements. Up With People has about 100 performers. Jeroen "Joe" Bloemen from Belgium and Paula Gerdes from Germany are in search of Host families who would be willing to share their home with a castmember or two of the Up With People Tour for a few days.
"Up With People is a unique leadership and education program and every six months around a hundred people from 15 different countries come together to travel the world and make a positive impact," explained Gerdes. "They go to a new city every week to do community service, perform a show and stay with local host families."
Up With People is going to be in Shreveport from September 23rd to the 30th and need places to stay. This is where the host families come in.
"We're looking for people who want to invite one of our participants into their home for a week,"explained Bloemen. "All they have to provide is local transportation to Centenary (College) in the morning and then back at night. A place to sleep which could be a bed, a couch, a hammock whatever they had. And breakfast and most dinners."
In addition to getting to see the perfomance for free, another benefit to host families is a unique experience to learn from someone else's culture and maybe to teach them about their culture. One of the host families is Mark Miller is Dean of Students at Centenary College. He explains an early experience with Up With People is one of the reasons he is hosting a castmember.
"As a parent; I remember when my first interaction with Up With People," recalled Miller. "I wasn't even hosting, my friend was hosting and he had a couple of people staying in his house. And I was about the age my daughter is now, she's nine and I actually still remember going there and meeting these people and seeing the show and just being entranced by these folks whoe were coming from Sweden and coming from from California and coming from China and all these other places. So, yeah I want my daughter to have that same experience."
If you'd like to help out and host a member of the Up With People Tour, the website is www.UpWithPeople-dot-ORG/Shreveport and click on the "Get Involved - Become a Host Family". You can also get ticket information on that same website. You can also send an e-mail to: pgerdes@upwithpeople.org or call 720-512-4513.
