The Friends Enrichment Program (FEP) of Moorestown celebrated its 25th anniversary at Perkins Center for the Arts on Oct. 2.
The volunteer nonprofit helps provide underserved children in the township with life-enriching activities and scholarships. Since its 1997 inception, the program has raised more than $300,000 and given out more than 1,000 scholarships to approximately 500 children.
Council honored the program’s anniversary with an official proclamation, read by Mayor Nicole Gillespie at the event. It cited the leadership of township resident and program founder Monique Begg, who saw the need for children to have summer recreation opportunities. The proclamation also emphasized Begg’s humanitarianism.
“I would lie if I said I did it alone,” Begg said. “I didn’t do it alone; I could not have done it alone. I did it with a lot of help and support from many different people, including some who unfortunately are no longer with us, though they served us very, very well.”
“There were many, many of them over the years who have passed, but I would like to mention four who did something very special for us, even when they were very ill or on the verge of dying from old age,” she added.
The four she named are her late husband Edwin, her son Daniel, the late Neil Hartman, Charlotte Gillespie and Kathy Campanella, program co-Chair Barbara Kreider and Bob and Maria Esche.
“ … I’m very, very grateful to Neil, without whom I could never have started this group,” Begg acknowledged. “I’m very thankful to Moorestown Friends Meeting and Moorestown Friends School, who both lent a lot of support, without which we could not have done it.”
“ … What I’m looking at is the future,” she added. “The future always starts with a beginning and we’re here, and I have wonderful people here, including (certainly) Barbara Kreider, and then I have Maria and Bob Esche … In a way, everybody who cares can be part of the future. You don’t have to do a whole lot; a little bit makes a big difference.”
Friends Enrichment Program activities are now being integrated into children’s programs at the Moorestown Library and Perkins.
“ … (There) is a philosopher from way back when, a Greek philosopher (Heraclitus), who said, ‘There is nothing permanent except change,’ so everything changes over time,” Begg noted. “That is not going to be always the way I thought of it, and by the way, I didn’t think of it in one big blob.”
“It came to me in little bits of this and that, and it came from the volunteers who had ideas and the parents who had ideas.”
To learn more about the program, visit its official Facebook page.
