The fifth annual A-Town Day, which jumps off March 26 at the Lakewood Ampitheater lot from noon to 8 p.m., is a health care festival, concert, food fest and day of awareness benefiting the Diabetes Association of Atlanta, as well as well as the B-Ware Foundation.
“People don’t go to health care events, and if they do go, they don’t stay long. They rush through, get their pamphlets and bags full of information and leave,” Glasper says. Knowing that pamphlets pile up like dust on a windowsill, Glasper will pump as much medical information through the speakers as the music coming from the likes of Sammy Sam, Kizzy Rock and Kilo Ali. There will be face painting, pony rides, fire trucks for the kids, wall climbing sponsored by the Army, food galore and much more.
“But, most importantly, at the end of the day, you take home awareness. We announce statistics before each performance. So, even if you choose to avoid the health care booths, you have to deal with the awareness and the statistics coming out of the speakers,” he assures. “We announce the statistics all day: environmental stats, diabetes, etc. We beat people in the head with the statistics.”
Glasper wishes someone would have done so in his family. His father died from diabetes; so did two of his uncles. He also lost one grandfather to prostate cancer and another to hypertension and strokes. Both of his grandmothers are cancer survivors, and he has another family member who currently has cancer.
Glasper is using the pain of the tragedies in his family as inspirational fuel to power his continual efforts to educate and inform. From his family members’ deaths, others may be able to live — if they listen to him.
For more info, log on to www.atownday.com, www.facebook.com/atownday and www.twitter.com/atownday.
–terry shropshire
