A full rainbow colored the morning sky over 27th and Prospect in Kansas City as the LINC team and its many partners prepared for what would become a beautiful afternoon for the Fifth Annual Caring Communities Day Sept. 12.

“Everybody here is from all walks of life,” attendee Tatia Smith said. “And everybody’s happy.”

As LINC President and CEO Janet Miles-Bartee said ahead of the big day, “We are Caring Communities. We care about the people we’re serving . . . Everyone is invited. Everyone is welcome.”

The event has become a celebration of the power of the people of Kansas City when they come together. The day celebrates all the work that the nearby Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church and the city and so many supporters did to turn around a corner of the city that in the 1990s and early 2000s had become shadowed by crime and drugs. It celebrates the rise of the Morning Star Youth and Family Life Center, the Kansas City Police East Patrol station and apartments and housing that rose in this place.

And it reflects the community drive and good will that shone when the Morning Star center during the Covid pandemic became a hub of life-saving services for everyone — all walks of life — in what remains a resilient neighborhood helping the many who still struggle with poverty.

“I thank God for sending so many people out here that have come together,” said Caring Communities Day attendee Cherry Reed. “It gives us a chance to come out and get things that we need, and what we don’t need we can help serve somebody else.”

The day gathers dozens of vendors and city and county services, as well as a host of state and local representatives and civic leaders.

“This is what love and representation of the community looks like,” Missouri State Rep. Michael Johnson told the crowd.

State Sen. Barbara Washington rallied the crowd into cheers for what the revitalized 27th and Prospect area means to the neighborhoods surrounding it, and for the many people behind it, including the Rev. John Modest Miles who joined all the gathered people.

“So we’ve got to say thank you to Rev. Miles,” she said, “and to LINC, and the Kansas City Police Department, and all those who have been a part of cleaning up Prospect.”

“They have done so much for our community, uplifting all of us,” said Kansas City Mayor Pro Tem Ryana Parks-Shaw. “Because it is that type of partnership that strengthens our city, that strengthens our neighborhoods, and strengthens our families.”

As attendee Sherry Hudson Campbell said, “Good things are happening in Kansas City.”

More than 1,200 people, including more than 500 children, were registered for the event.  The list of gifts and services provided throughout the day included more than 300 backpacks filled with school supplies, 20 free haircuts, thousands of pounds of free produce from Urban Produce and University Health, hundreds of free books from the Mid-Continent Library’s Reading Rocket truck and the Kansas City Public Library and 44 gun locks from Grandparents for Gun Safety.

The Kansas City Municipal Court’s Community Court team added several people to its October docket to get help resolving outstanding warrants. Many people connected with Legal Aid for free legal services. Many registered to vote at the NAACP’s table. Many took advantage of different city services. Many lucky raffle winners and musical chairs players — as well as persistent children in LINC’s scavenger hunt game — all together took home hundreds of prizes. And there were free hamburgers, hotdogs and other food for everyone.

“It was amazing,” said Verbena Fisher as she and her children were leaving. “We had a beautiful time — clothes, food, hygiene products — just everything, pretty much everything. I actually shed a couple of tears earlier because they also helped me with housing. This brought a lot of — it just brought tears to my heart.”