General Electric Pep Rally Aims To Help Baltimore Children
BALTIMORE (WJZ) — Building healthy minds and bodies to form healthy communities. That's the goal of a two-day event organized by General Electric.
Andrea Fujii explains how this year Baltimore children are benefitting from this global initiative.
Three-hundred fifty elementary school students are doing everything from playing flag football to playing soccer to studying math.
"We have more fun than usual today because we never really came out here and played flag football before and we're having fun," said fifth-grader Tavon Mitchell.
It's all part of GE's annual African American forum, in which 500 employees from around the country take two days to help a community. This year, they helped Baltimore.
"Feeding them the right food, exercising, that kind of thing hopefully will make them better leaders to the community," said GE Organizer Dionna Dunbar.
One of the event sites is the Carmelo Anthony Center in East Baltimore and is in conjunction with the Living Classrooms Program.
"It really means a lot for this neighborhood," said organizer Talib Horn. "It means a lot for Living Classrooms to expose a group of children to different companies like this."
Organizers say the statistics show less than half of the kids will graduate from high school, but programs hope to change that.
More mentors help guide the city's future.
"I think it's nice because they take the time out of their day to come here," said fourth-grader Deajah Dodd.
This is the 20th year for GE's African American Forum.
