Our Town

Little Rock notebook

Area leaders panel focuses on women

Area business women and leaders will lead a panel discussion titled "Empowering Women and Girls: Amplify Your Voice" at noon Monday at the Clinton Presidential Center.

The presentation will localize a report completed by the Clinton Foundation earlier this month that aimed to give the most complete picture of the status of women's participation in communities around the world since the 1995 UN Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.

The report was part of the foundation's "No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project" initiative headed by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Chelsea Clinton.

Monday's event will feature local women leaders talking about their own experiences to see how they compare with the report's findings.

Panelists are Marcy Doderer, president and chief executive officer of Arkansas Children's Hospital; Beth Keck, senior director of women's economic empowerment for Wal-Mart; Terri McCullough, director of "No Ceilings: The Full Participation Project"; Dara Richardson-Heron, chief executive officer of the Young Women's Christian Association USA; and Scott Shirey, founder and executive director of KIPP Delta Public Schools.

Center sets spring festival, plant sale

The Southern Center for Agroecology is hosting a spring planting festival Saturday.

The event is from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Little Rock Urban Farming, 5910 G St. There will be plants for sale, food vendors, workshops and activities for children.

A planting table for children will be set up from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Food vendors will be on site from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. for lunch.

At 11 a.m., there will be a seed saving workshop with Herb Culver, founder of Bean Mountain Farm. At noon, Tom Frothingham will teach a "Planting for Pollinators" workshop.

From noon until 1 p.m., there will be a seed exchange at the John Gould Fletcher Library, across the street at 823 N. Buchanan St.

Attendees are asked to park at the library or along H or North Pierce streets.

Lunch event looks at 1860 expulsion

A Legacies & Lunch session Wednesday will focus on how in 1860 Arkansas became the only state to prohibit free black people from residing within its borders.

Brian Mitchell, a researcher, social policy analyst and historian at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, will discuss what happened to those who left the state. He's creating a database of free blacks who were expelled from Arkansas in 1860 and writing a narrative detailing their experiences.

The session is at noon Wednesday in the Main Library's Darragh Center, 100 Rock St., in the River Market District downtown.

The free event is hosted by the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies and sponsored in part by the Arkansas Humanities Council. Attendees can bring a sack lunch. Drinks and desserts are provided.

Metro on 03/29/2015

Upcoming Events