About 15 students and mentors from Escape to the Arts and the Hispanic Center of Greater Danbury visited the Boys & Girls Club of Ridgefield Monday to learn about Martin Luther King Jr.
The Hispanic Center put together a program on King the students watched before working on a "I have a Dream" mural.
Ridgefield students started working on the mural at the Boys & Girls Club Friday, and the middle school and high school kids from both towns continued it Monday.
The mural is being painted on the windows of the art room that look toward Main Street from the Governor Street club.
"We're helping students with the college application process," said Brenda Rodriguez, director of the Americorps Collegiate Development Program at the Hispanic Center. "For some families, these kids will be the first ones who went to college. They have no idea of what is involved."
Kristin Goncalves, the Boys & Girls Club program director, said elementary school students started the mural Friday.
"We started with the "I have a dream," idea and asked them to paint their dreams," Goncalves said.
Ingrid Alvarez-DiMarzo, former director of the Hispanic Center and long-time advocate of the Ridgefield Boys & Girls Club, visited the club Monday with the Danbury children. She said Danbury and Ridgefield have been working together for years to help their children. She said some of that work is done by Escape to the Arts and the Harambee Center in Danbury, and by the Boys & Girls Club and the Hispanic Center.
"It's work that continues today," Alvarez-DiMarzo said. She said she would like to see an organization like the Boys & Girls Club operating in Danbury, perhaps out of the Armory on West Street that is now home to the Harambee Center.
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