Harlem Rockets
Comedy Basketball for School Fundraisers

Since 1992 the New York City based Harlem Rockets comedy basketball team has entertained families and school children with classic comedy and dazzling basketball. Their world class athlete/entertainers, amazing shots, good willed camaraderie on the court with the sponsor chosen “dream team”, and interaction with everyone in the stands create a fun-filled, wholesome night for everyone. Moreover, girls and boys get so excited when they are chosen to participate in the half-time event on court with the Rockets, or when they meet team members face to face after the game at the concession stand.

A Harlem Rockets night is also a wonderful way to fundraise for school or community projects! Most sponsors net between $1500 and $5,000 for their charity. In fact, over the last sixteen years, the Harlem Rockets have helped more than 2,500 sponsors raise over $5 million dollars!

Click Here For More About the Harlem Rockets.

Walter Bond
Motivator, Author & Entrepreneur
“A Stranger in a Strange Land: Speaking to Brothers”

NBA athlete, sports broadcaster and speaker, Walter Bond leads a content driven, power-packed workshop designed to empower and enlighten minority students. Having himself been a minority student on a traditional white campus, Walter knows the territory.

In an informal setting, Walter helps students to acknowledge and address the numerous issues they face on campus and to take authority for their experience. He trains students to think, act, and talk like change agents; to interact and ask real-life questions; and to seek and find real-life solutions to everyday issues.

Mr. Bond also incorporates into his school program the excellent time management and goals section from his book, All Buts Stink! How To Live Your BEST LIFE and Eliminate Excuses.

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Organized in cooperation with Al-Haaj Ghazi Y. Khankan, Islamic Awareness Day can feature one speaker, Mr. Khankan, or expand to more than a dozen. Its goal is to introduce your students to Islam, its history and culture and to correct the distorted image of Al-Islaam in the West.
Click Here For More On Al-Haaj Ghazi Y. Khankan

Richard Aldorasi
Hands-On Colonial America Papermaking, Historical Letter Press & "Go Green Now" Assembly & Classroom Visits

Richard Aldorasi established the Philadelphia Handmade Paper Company in 1989. He has since continually conducted hands-on living history programs and art workshops in Turkish (ebru) and Japanese Suminagashi marbling, paper making, letter press printing, decorative paper, and book arts. Sharing his programs at numerous arts, historical and educational institutions, Mr. Aldorasi has displayed his expertise and experience as a teacher and artist with all ages and skill levels. As a working artist for 40 plus years, his talents go unsurpassed in handmade paper and marbling. Sharing and applying these ancient techniques while working with 100% authentic tools, Mr. Aldorasi provides an adventure into the world of art, as you experience history come alive.

Richard arrives in his pick up truck with his printing press and needs only a source of water to fill his coopered, cedar vat and a ramp so that he can wheel his printing press into your performing space. He is an easy going person and a joy to work with!

In his 40-minute school assembly program, Richard Aldorasi, in full Colonial costume and using 100% authentic tools, brings to students a mobile hands-on living history program in handmade papermaking and letter-press printing. He demonstrates the 2,000 year old craft of papermaking by forming sheets of linen paper out of a three-foot coopered, cedar vat and also operates an 18th century wooden lever press, demonstrating the five centuries of letterpress printing. Your students will be transported into scenes from past centuries, as well as life in Colonial America. Borrowing intriguing stories from the history of papermaking and letter press trades, Richard also includes the important part that Philadelphia and Pennsylvania once played.

In addition, Richard introduces the environmental issues of recycling paper in the 21st century. Emphasizing the first 1,750 years of making paper without trees, he shares the many ways we can “Go Green Now.” He explains issues such as the “quiet fire syndrome” and speaks with students about the decay and misuse of paper in our society, along with the unyielding efforts of recycling and the long term effects of chemicals in our paper and printing processes.

Following his assembly program, Mr. Aldorasi is happy to stay at school and work with individual classes of 30 to 40 students at a time and give his 30-minute workshop on papermaking or letter press printing.

In the classroom papermaking workshop each student will experience the process of making his or her own sheet of linen paper using an 18th century antique laid wire mould and deckle with the “Philadelphia Handmade Paper Company” water mark. In the letter press printing workshop each student will experience the actual process of inking the plate with inking balls, setting the paper, rolling the plate under the platen, working the lever of an 18th century wood printing press, and printing a sheet of colonial currency on handmade linen paper. This experience takes students back hundreds of years down the trail of history and enables each student to draw from the invaluable experience of actually participating in the paper making process used by printers and paper makers in the New World. Each student forms his or her own piece of linen paper and/or shares in the feeling of working the lever of a Common English Press.

Bruce Lawton and Ben Model have been producing silent films shows for the past five years, most notably at the popular New York City-based Silent Clowns Film Series - featured in stories on silent film in the New York Times, New York Magazine and on NY1 and BBC-TV--and also at the New-York Historical Society's Family Classics of the Silent Screen. Bruce and Ben also perform regularly in schools, libraries, museums, theatres and churches. They have also taught a course on Silent Film at the New School in New York City.  In this era of digital film and TV, there is nothing like seeing real silent movies with piano acccompaniment.  There is a completely different atmosphere watching silent movies--vigorous active audience participation!
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"The Creator gifted each and every one of us with something special.
You find that within yourself. All your dreams can come true.
The greatest gifts on earth are God's children. Don't be afraid to share with
the people, because we all come from one Creator."

An enrolled member of Fort Berthold's three affiliated tribes, Kenny Merrick, Jr.'s experience with Indian culture has been life-long in the making. Mr. Merrick is also a Grammy nominated musician who has traveled around the world performing Native American music. During his school programs, he talks about American Indian folk lore, customs, and reverence for nature and elders--and also plays the flute. If space allows, Kenny invites the entire school audience, teachers and students alike, to participate in a drum dance.
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