Celebrating Pride Month and the Rainbow Festival at the Prince George’s County Memorial Library System

By PRESS OFFICER
PGCMLS

LARGO, Md. (June 2, 2025)—The Prince George’s County Memorial Library System (PGCMLS) will be hosting a variety of programs this June in celebration of Pride, as a capstone to its Pride programming throughout the year. Festivities will culminate in the all-day Rainbow Festival at Oxon Hill Branch Library on Saturday, June 28.

“Prince George’s County Memorial Library System celebrates and honors the fundamental value and dignity of all our customers, and is excited to offer so many vibrant opportunities for community, connection, and learning in celebration of Pride Month,” says Megan Sutherland, PGCMLS Chief Operating Officer. “Whether you’re coming to a branch to explore our shelves, or joining us at the Rainbow Festival for community resources and a parade, PGCMLS is proud to provide a welcoming space for all.”

In the lead-up to the Rainbow Festival, the Library will be hosting a number of Pride-themed storytimes, as well as standalone book discussions about “Memorial” by Bryan Washington (June 17, Glenarden Branch Library), and “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous” by Ocean Vuong (June 17, miXt Food Hall).

There will also be film screenings of “Some Like It Hot” (June 25, South Bowie Branch Library), and “Sally” (June 25, Joe’s Movement Emporium).

For kids and families, branches across the county will be hosting a variety of “Crafternoon” programs: Pride buttons at the Spauldings Branch Library, stuffed rainbow clouds at the Hillcrest Heights Branch Library, Keith Haring figures at the Mount Rainier Branch Library, watercolor rainbow clouds at the Accokeek Branch Library, rainbow friendship bracelets at the Hyattsville Branch Library, and a wild coloring adventure at the Upper Marlboro Branch Library.

Finally, a number of special community pop-up events will create opportunities for Prince Georgians to get together to learn, discuss, and celebrate all things Pride, including the Charlemagne Chateau-hosted “Pride Bingo” kickoff to this year’s “Book Crawl” on June 18 at Hyattsville’s Pizzeria Paradiso.

All of this leads up to the highlight of the Library’s Pride programming: the 2025 PGCMLS Rainbow Festival on Saturday, June 28.

Free for all, this celebratory event will take place from 11 a.m.–3 p.m. throughout the Oxon Hill Branch Library. Featured authors and performers include Buddah Desmond, Allen R. Wells, and Charlemagne Chateau, who will be joined by community tablers including PG Changemakers, the University of Maryland School of Public Health Science, Prince George’s County Health Connect, PFLAG Bowie, the Latin American Youth Center (LAYC), and the TOGETHER Program.

PGCMLS customers of all ages are invited to join their neighbors for storytime, crafts, music, face painting, a Pride parade, and more. Festive dress and costumes are encouraged!

For a full look at Pride events at PGCMLS branch libraries, please visit the PGCMLS website, pgcmls.info/events, or visit the PGCMLS LGBTQ+Pride Hub.

The Prince George’s County Memorial Library System (PGCMLS) helps customers discover and define opportunities that shape their lives. The Library serves the 967,000+ residents of Prince George’s County, Maryland through 19 branch libraries, a 24/7 online library, the County Correctional Center Library, and pop-up services throughout the community. PGCMLS is a responsive and trusted community-driven organization. Programs, services, and outreach activities serve book lovers, immigrants and refugees, job seekers, children, young professionals, seniors, and families alike. PGCMLS is the recipient of two Top Innovator Awards from the Urban Libraries Council (2023 - Democracy; 2021 - Workforce and Economic Development). Learn more at www.pgcmls.info/about-us

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Hospice of the Chesapeake Seeks Volunteers for Bedside Singing Program

By ELYZABETH MARCUSSEN
Hospice of the Chesapeake

PASADENA, Md. (June 2, 2025)—Do you have a heart for singing and a soul for service? Hospice of the Chesapeake invites community members to lend their voices to a new and deeply meaningful volunteer opportunity—Hospice Harmonies. This is a bedside singing program designed to bring peace and comfort through song to patients and families.

No professional singing experience is required—just a love of music and a desire to offer comfort. All volunteers will receive training.

“Music has the unique ability to soothe, connect and bring peace,” said Heather Conner, Volunteer Services Manager at Hospice of the Chesapeake. “With Hospice Harmonies, we’re creating sacred, gentle moments through song—moments that offer reassurance and warmth to patients and their families when they’re needed most.”

Volunteers will practice weekly on Thursdays at the John & Cathy Belcher Campus in Pasadena, Maryland, alternating between noon and 6 p.m. sessions.

This is more than a volunteer opportunity—it’s a way to bring joy, dignity, and connection to someone at the end of life.

Interested in making music that matters? Contact the Volunteer Team at volunteers@hospicechesapeake.org or call 410-987-2003 to learn more or sign up.

Watch this video for a moment during a rehearsal session: https://vimeo.com/1088550253?share=copy

 
At Hospice of the Chesapeake, we support individuals and families facing progressive, serious illness to reimagine hope—living each day with intention and peace—while ensuring our nonprofit organization remains a vital resource for future generations. We develop care plans to minimize symptoms and focus on what matters most for patients and families in Anne Arundel, Calvert, Charles and Prince George’s counties. Caring for life throughout the journey with illness and loss is the mission of Hospice of the Chesapeake. For more information, please visit www.hospicechesapeake.org

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Youth Mental Health Part Fifteen
To Improve Youth Mental Health, These Programs Start by Educating Parents

By ETHAN THERRIEN
Capital News Service

Melat Wondimagegen was not the parent she is today when she first stepped off a plane in February 2019 to start a new life in the United States. As an Ethiopian immigrant and mother of an 11-year-old and a 2-year-old, she grappled with how to raise her children in an unfamiliar American culture—and how to understand their emotions in ways she hadn’t been taught back home.

One seemingly ordinary newsletter from her children’s school changed everything for her. After reading it, Wondimagegen decided to enroll in the Parent Encouragement Program in Kensington, Maryland.

Through PEP, she said, she learned new ways to connect with her children, improve their relationship, and to be more understanding and less authoritarian in her parenting. 

“It helps me be more conscious of how I talk and how I raise them,” she said.

PEP’s goal is to teach parents how to communicate with their children in an encouraging and respectful way. Wondimagegen said the program does just that.

“It’s a box of tools,” Wondimagegen said. “If one is not gonna work, I’m gonna do this [instead].” 

She added, “But the consistency, [my daughter] knows that, ‘Oh, mommy is trying to do something. Mommy is trying.’ So, they like it. It really works.”
 

A nationwide effort

PEP isn’t unique. Hands-on parenting programs are offered nationwide, aiming to equip parents with the knowledge and skills necessary to foster healthy relationships with their children. 

Such programs aim, in part, to prevent mental health problems among young people—a goal Maryland state officials acknowledged when they gave PEP $1.6 million in grants in the first round of funding under the state’s new youth mental health effort. Those grants support PEP programs in Montgomery, Frederick, Howard and Dorchester counties.

Even so, PEP Executive Director Kathy Hedge said many people don’t recognize how important healthy parenting is in producing mentally healthy children. 

“All of us at PEP think this is so obvious, but it’s always astounding to me how many people don’t think it’s obvious,” Hedge said. “To me, it’s just not a leap at all to see how you go from the state of the home environment and the relationship with the parent and child to then the child’s mental health.”

Empowering children

PEP encourages parents to see themselves less as managers of their children and more as coaches who see things from their children’s perspective. The process involves teaching parents how to empower their children by identifying what causes conflicts in the home and helping parents take a step back by giving their children a voice.

“What you find that happens when you start behaving in this different way with your children is that you actually build their confidence,” Hedge said. “They feel more respected. They feel more empowered. They understand their role in the family. They have a role in the family now that they can see is important and contributes to the functioning of the family. When these things start to happen, your kids will become more emotionally and mentally comfortable in your family.”

Programs like PEP emphasize a concept called reflective listening, according to Gyniquea Davis, who used to take classes with PEP but now works there as a program manager.

“The power of reflective listening is that a parent doesn’t just hear what a child says and comes up with their own interpretation of what that means,” Davis said. “You listen to your child, but then you ask clarifying questions to make sure you understand what they’re trying to say.”

As an example, Davis cited what should happen if a child returns home with a poor test score.
 
“Let’s say [as a child], I failed my test,” Davis said.  “If I have a parent who is using reflective listening, I’m connected with them and we have special time on a regular basis, I’m going to be more likely to come and say, ‘Yeah. Mom. I failed my test. I’m really stressed about it and I don’t know what to do.’ Because I know I may have a parent who instead of going right to judgement and punishment, is going to maybe ask me questions.”

An approach that works

Parents get more comfortable, too, when they use what PEP teaches them. 

Research on PEP from the National Opinion Research Center  at the University of Chicago found that after seven weeks of classes, parents reported a jump in satisfaction with their relationship with their children, from an average of 1.67 to 2.58 on a four-point scale. 

When asked to rate the quality of their communications with their children, parents rated it at an average of 1.88 on that four-point scale before they took PEP classes. The average ranking jumped to 2.60 after parents took those classes.

Hedge said there’s a reason parents feel better about parenting once they listen more to their children.

“When you really start to see the world through your child’s eyes, it changes your behavior as a parent,” Hedge said. “It’s made me more patient, more calm, a better communicator. All the things that [parents] will tell us, because fundamentally, they can see the world through their kids’ eyes now and they understand their perspective.”

There’s also evidence that programs like PEP can boost the mental health of children. A 2013 study from Procedia, which studies social and behavioral sciences, examined how parental education programs affect depression in children. The study involved 250 children and their mothers from an elementary school in Tehran, Iran. Before the study, mothers took a test to measure their stress while children took one to test for depression.

Mothers then took part in an eight-week parental training course. Afterward, the same tests were administered to both the mothers and their children—and results found both parental stress levels and depression symptoms in children significantly decreased. 

Conversely, research has shown disciplining children harshly can harm their mental health.  A 2020 study published by the National Library of Medicine found coercive and harsh parenting in societies that place higher value on children’s academic achievement interfered with their children’s ability to develop autonomy and independence. Harsh parenting also resulted in higher rates of depression, low-self esteem and low self-confidence.

Negative childhood experiences with parental discipline can be a potential hazard that leads to bigger problems down the road, said Loise Taliaferro, who supervises the 11-week Strengthening Families Program at the Anne Arundel County Department of Health. Taliaferro cited a screening process called Adverse Childhood Experiences that suggests physical punishment can cause negative effects on brain development in children.

“There’s a set of 10 questions that [children] respond to and the higher the score, the higher you say yes to the questions—the higher the chances that you may have mental health issues or even a substance abuse disorder,” Taliaferro said. “One of them is in relation to punishment: Did your parents slap you or do some kind of physical punishment?”

An imperfect program

Programs like PEP work to help parents address these issues and reduce pressure in the home that may typically escalate to physical punishment—but such parental education programs aren’t perfect. 

Most parenting programs are operated on a case-by-case basis and are almost entirely dependent on how willing a parent is to continue with the program, according to Taliaferro. She said this makes stubborn parents with ingrained values tough or almost impossible to crack. 

The time commitment is another issue. According to Hedge, PEP runs for six to eight weeks and requires parents to dedicate around two hours per week to physically come into the classroom.

Getting fathers in the classroom can be another problem. Women who participate in the program significantly outnumber men, but according to Davis, participation from fathers is growing.

“This winter, and maybe in fall, too, we had a dad’s group,” Davis said. “Men who are facilitators were meeting with dads to talk about what that looks like, you know, as a father.”

The key to success for parents in these programs is a willingness to listen and understand. If parents aren’t willing to shoulder some responsibility, nothing will change, according to Hedge. She said for parents willing to do so, the immediate benefits can be profound.

“When you as a parent start really listening to your children, stop the yelling, share some of that power and let your kids have a voice, some of those changes can be pretty immediate,” Hedge said. “As parents and as humans, it can be hard to change. We fall back into our bad habits, so we have to keep working on our own selves—to keep changing.”

Hedge learned all of that firsthand.

“I remember the first time I went and sat in a role play, I could see two people doing the mother and son role play and that parent was me,” Hedge said. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s me.’ But then I could watch and say, ‘And that’s my son.’ In this particular role play, the parent was yelling at the son, and I just started crying because it was so emotionally moving for me to see what it must be like to be my son in an interaction with me. You can’t unwatch that.”

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