Multicultural Council World Traveler Walk-A-Thon event sees residents travel the world from the Rotary Trail
There was a chance to travel the world on the Rotary Trail in Prince Albert on Saturday. The Prince Albert Multicultural Council hosted their first World Traveler Walk-A-Thon and it gave people the opportunity to learn about all of the cultural tapestry in their own community.
“World Traveler Walk A Thon event has an objective of traveling safely in our own backyard community. Because we haven’t traveled because of COVID for more than a year now we thought it might be a fun way for family, friends and children to come out and travel and see and experience and explore the wonderful culture we ha have in our community,” Michelle Hassler, executive director of the Prince Albert Multicultural Council, explained.
According to Hassler, they began planning the event for last year after Hassler saw a similar event in another city.
“ I thought that it would be a really fun fundraiser event for the Prince Albert Multicultural Council, But then we kind of thought about so when is the best time to do it and we did think about doing it the early morning before the Canada Day celebration on July 1 but we thought that would be a lot of work and organizing for us,” she said.
This year they really decided to give it a try and decided to try the first weekend in June. She explained that there was not much scheduled for the weekend so the council was able to find an ideal time for the event.
“It was an ideal weekend definitely, you don’t compete with other stuff. The weather is always tricky but it being the first week of June it got a little bit nicer and we got lucky,” Hassler said.
The route began at the Prince Albert Elks Hall and went five kilometers down the Rotary Trail. Countries and organizations represented included the Prince Albert Historical Museum, The Prince Albert French Society, Ukraine, Nigeria, Philippines and India. The route concluded with the Council’s own booth.
The goal was to make it like taking a trip to many countries on the five kilometers.
“The main thing is it’s like traveling so once you registered you get a passport and then you use that passport to go visit the countries, you get stamps and at the end of your journey you go back to the registration table you hand out your stamps and you will get the chance to win some nice prizes,” Hassler said.
The countries and booths were all volunteers. The Council’s English students also volunteered.
The success of the first year already has Hassler thinking about how it can grow next year.
“It’s better to have room for improvement and room to grow,” she said.
“Hopefully next year we will have more walkers and we will have more volunteer cultural groups to set up for countries and visit more countries next year and we can add more in our booth for example cultural food,” Hassler added.
Hassler herself walked the entire route while performing a Facebook Live and was impressed how it worked out.
“It turned out how we pictured it, it turned out very great I would say. You couldn’t see a lot of people but that’s because of the spacing. We have to cover the almost five kilometers that we promised people that we would give them,” she said.
She thanked all of the cultural organizations and people who came out to experience the walk. To experience the walk yourself Hassler invites people to see the Facebook Live on the Prince Albert Multicultural Council page.
