NSCC to host a pair of informational events

LYNN – North Shore Community College has announced a pair of events at its Lynn Campus in the coming weeks touching on some of the hot-button environmental and social issues facing modern society.The college’s Multi-Cultural Society and Muslim Student Association will host a Forum on Social Responsibility Wednesday, March 19 from 9 a.m.- 12:30 p.m. in the campus gymnasium.The informational forum will focus on economic development in the Amazon Rainforest, and the implications both global and local of eliminating habitat resources.A panel of international and local conservation and preservation experts will speak at the event, covering such topics as eco-business, carbon credits, recycling and preserving and enhancing sustainable aquatic resources. The panel will also present educational information and measures for community leadership and stewardship that will help reduce carbon footprints as well as decrease depletion of natural resources.Panelists include Julio Tocalino from the Brazilian Carbon Bureau, Lynn Sewer and Water Commissioner Manuel Alacantra, Ford K-8 Principal Claire Crane, New England Aquarium Senior Aquarist Scott Dowd, along with independent film producer Don McConnell.Students from the Ford K-8 School in Lynn will perform their production of Environment Sustainability, a play that details ways to sustain the environment in an urban city such as Lynn. The school has a partnership with the college, and students from various grades and classes periodically visit the campus to attend special classes on a number of educational issues, including the environment.In addition, there will be a presentation of excerpts from McConnell’s documentary “Descending the Rio Negro,” described as “a journey through time from the stone age Yanomami Tribe inhabitants to the modern, free trade city environments at the confluence of the Amazon River.”Moving from the effort to save the environment at home to the movement to stop social injustice in Africa, the college will also host its 21st annual Forum on Tolerance on March 27, with this year’s theme being “A Focus on Africa.”The daylong forum will focus on the diversity and conflicts festering in the African continent. Throughout the day participants can attend presentations featuring topics such as the Darfur genocide, Ethiopian Jews, A Student’s Personal Perspective on Southern Sudan and AIDS in Africa. Tables with informational materials will be available throughout the forum on every topic presented.The forum will also feature food and entertainment native to Africa, with a Kenyan, Nigerian, Sudanese and Zimbabwean lunch provided by professor Love Maya and African students, and a performance by Mamadou Diop featuring drum rhythms of Senegal.Speakers will include Maya, who is a professor in the school’s Communication Skills Department, Executive Director of the Southern Sudanese Solidarity Organization James L. Modi, student Garang Macam, leader of the North American Conference on Ethiopian Jewry Barbara Ribakove Gordon, AIDS activists Lewis and Judy Privin, along with Diop, who will perform in his native language of Mamadou.The event will run from 8:30 a.m. to 2:15 p.m. in the Lynn Campus Gymnasium.For more information on either event, call 781-593-6722 ext. 6274 or email [email protected].