A Fun Way to Celebrate What Makes Us Different
Bringing the Community Together For Over Twenty Years!
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The Friendship Festival in Pelican Rapids is a family-friendly, annual event that celebrates the many peoples of the world. With performances, music, and a variety of foods and activities, this event increases our understanding of what it means to love one another not only for our differences, but because we are different.
Since its beginning in 1999, there has always been something fun to do. Bake sales, ethnic cooking classes, foreign dance lessons, crafts, performances from local and outside talent and various food vendors are just some of the unique things to do. Joanie Ellison hopes that people will walk away with experiences they are both familiar and unfamiliar with. “We’ve always tried to have the festival be a combination of the different nationalities that live in Pelican Rapids and then something way different—something out of the ordinary.”
All are invited to join the festivities, from Minneapolis to Fargo and everywhere in between. “The Friendship Festival has many important aspects to the community of Pelican Rapids that brings people together. Not only from within our community, but from outside our community,” Mayor Brent Frazier explains. Julie Sachs agrees: “It is the epitome of a place to belong; a place where everybody is welcomed. This community is amazing about coming together and just really having a good time learning about each other and actually being able to see the value in knowing that we have richer lives because we’re all here.”
No matter who you are, the Friendship Festival has plenty of surprises in store. “It’s wonderful to watch people stand next to each other and enjoy something together, while separate,” Ellison remarks. “They’ll turn to each other and grin—one a Somali, the other an old Caucasian woman who has lived in this town since she was born.” It’s about more than meeting new people, Mayor Frazier further expresses. “We realized that we are created as one people in the world, and we have respect for each other and show love for each other.”
At the end of the day, the Friendship Festival allows people from all walks of life to come together and see that the things which make us different are ultimately what make us the same.
