A thousand faces. A thousand smiles. Food for everyone. Games, prizes . . .

The first annual LINC Caring Communities Day in Kansas City was a huge hit — all under a big bowl of blue sky.

“This is the happening place for taking care of our community,” said Jackson County Executive Frank White, one of several public officials who joined the summer fair outside the Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church Youth and Family Life Center at 27th Street and Prospect Avenue.

“Whatever it might be (that a family needs),” White said of the services and activities sprawled across the church campus, “it’s here today.”

The rhythm hits you first. Dance beats shook the soundstage, luring the approaching crowd ahead of the smell of grilled hamburgers and hot dogs.

Group dances on the asphalt followed soon after: “To the right, to the right, to the right . . .”

But while partying to tunes like The Cupid Shuffle and the laughter of children made the day, more serious work really hit home, said LINC Caring Communities Coordinator Danisha Clarkson.

Because the fair also helped dozens of families and households get help with rent, utility bills and other services.

“The standout moment for me,” Clarkson said, “was helping a Wendell Phillips (Elementary School) family whose lights were cut off, and being able to immediately restore their service.”

The list of service partners was long: The Kansas City Fire Department, Community Action Agency of Greater Kansas City, Evergy, Spire, Justice in the Schools with Legal Aid of Western Missouri, voter registration with the League of Women Voters, job information with the Full Employment Council and take-home children’s books that LINC purchased through First Book .

“What a beautiful Caring Communities Day we had!” Clarkson said.

This is what LINC does, said Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, who joined the crowd at the fair.

“Caring Communities LINC is invested in our city in so many different neighborhoods,” Lucas said. “You see so many people doing the work that makes a difference in our community each day. . . . The truth is, we (city government services) can’t do it all. It’s groups like this that do.”

Children went home with some 1,500 new children’s books.

Families and children won more than a thousand game prizes. Eight raffle winners went home with an air fryer or outdoor grill.

University Health distributed 125 bags of fruit.

Adults and kids ate some 1,300 hamburgers and hot dogs and 500 ice cream treats, plus snow cones and cotton candy.

Dozens more registered to vote, learned about free legal services, applied for home internet discounts or got help with utility bills and rent.

“It was just terrific, terrific, terrific,” said Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church Pastor Rev. John Modest Miles.

“You could see the community really, really enjoyed it — the hundreds and hundreds of people. It meant so much.”

Miles thanked the many partners in the effort with the church and LINC, especially the Kansas City Fire Department which was a key collaborator in putting together Saturday’s fair.

Fire Chief Donna Lake said she had to come out and see the celebration of “being able to give back” to the community.

“We really wanted to be out here for a great event like this,” Lake said, “with all these kids and families.”

While the fitness dance team NickiFit and DJ Carl led the show from the soundstage, one special performance dazzling the crowd was LINC’s drum line and drill team from Smith-Hale Middle School in the Hickman Mills School District.

Hickman Mills Superintendent Yaw Obeng watched their show as he joined the celebration of the community’s strength together.

“It sends a message to our students and our families that people do care,” Obeng said. “And the opportunities (families have) to reach out to the many organizations that are here — and (enjoy) ice cream and food — brings fellowship and camaraderie.”

Missouri state Rep. Ashley Bland Manlove surveilled the scene Saturday and saw everything that’s possible with so many neighbors binding together.

“I see a lot of families,” she said. “I see a lot of potential. I see a lot of room for engagement.”

The message is particularly important for the students and young adults she saw enjoying the fair.

“Our young people need to be stimulated,” she said. “Events like this help them see what giving back means.”

LINC has been teaming with Morning Star for more than two years, setting up a service hub for surrounding Kansas City neighborhoods that were most stressed by the pandemic. Services gathered at the site distributed more than 26,000 Covid vaccinations, accessed more than $1.8 million in utility bill and rent assistance and distributed more than 3 million pounds of food since early 2020.

Saturday’s Caring Communities Day celebrated that work and the work of all of LINC’s Caring Communities serving neighborhoods throughout the area including in the Kansas City Public Schools and the Hickman Mills, Grandview, Center, North Kansas City and Fort Osage school districts.

LINC intends to make this an annual celebration, taking a Saturday each year in June to bring everyone together in a really big way.

Meanwhile, the work goes on and we’ll be together in the small ways — and all the ways in between.

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer