Marathon Museum Needs Your CLICK to Win $50,000 In Fundig
Submitted by Chantal Gingras
MARATHON, ON – The Marathon Museum has just been reopened and has a very small budget. It was closed due to flooding and many of the artifacts collected to date have been kept at a different location while repairs to the building were taking place. It would be a benefit to hire a part-time worker to sort the artifacts as well as create a webpage and a brochure to promote the museum. The museum would purchase video equipment in order to interview people from the area who could share stories about the past. These interviews could be shown at the museum to interested visitors.
Promoting the importance of local and Canadian history to the students of the area by offering after school programs. The museum could have two programs, one for high school students and one for elementary school students. To keep the programs interesting for the students there would be a craft or activity along with historical information.
The museum would welcome volunteers from surrounding schools. These youth would be given certain tasks during the week to come to the museum and would have work set up for them : creating displays, sorting artifacts, cleaning, participate and help with programming. This gives at-risk-youth a safe environment to spend their time and energy while learning.
The museum would run a Regional Heritage Fair which would allow students to share research projects with the public. These projects could be about music, dance, drama or anything they would like to research. The winning entries could then be displayed at the museum. These fairs are done throughout Ontario, however there has not been one anywhere in this region (as far as we know the closest one is 800 km away).
There were German Prisoner of War camps and Japanese Internment camps in close proximity to Marathon. The museum could explore these areas and bring back artifacts and information to the museum.
The museum has been running on mostly volunteer energy and donations and a donation from the Aviva Community Fund would go a long way to improving our efforts.
