HOUGHTON — The Portage Lake District Library will host its first Keweenaw International Children’s Festival beginning 10:30 a.m. Saturday. The event began as an idea from the Elaine Bacon Literacy Program and is being coordinated to allow children to experience cultures found throughout the region in an interactive way through crafts, story telling, music, food tasting and more. Groups and individuals will be at the library to share their cultural practices and traditions with the community.

Expected participants include the Finnish American Heritage Center Folk School, Copper Country Suzuki Association, local bluegrass musicians and a guitarist player from India. There will be a storytelling session featuring speakers from Zimbabwe, Canada and Belarus.

“We want it to be a joy filled event where families can come and learn about each other, make new connections, make new friendships, and just celebrate our children,” Library Planning Committee Member Kelsey Gross said. “I think it’s just going to really expose them to new cultures, new ideas, new ways of seeing things. They’ll get the chance to learn words and new languages, get to experience new music and food that they’ve never maybe tried before. I think it just has that strong sense of a warm community here.”

Gross explained Michigan Tech holds the Parade of Nations and the Multicultural Festival each year which is open to the community, but is primarily aimed at international students. The Keweenaw International Children’s Festival is meant to focus on children and allow them to participate in cultural activities.

“So whether it’s building the crafts, trying the food or participating in the music, we really wanted it to make it educational for kids, so aiming it at their level and kind of where they’re at,” Gross said.

One of the interactive elements of the event is crafts, of with Library Liaison Catie Gardner in charge. Gardner explained the craft portion will have multiple projects, such as pinwheels, bags and buttons. While children make their crafts, throughout the library there will be cultural booths set up where they can speak with individuals representing various cultures with displays and handouts. Other activities include henna, or temporary tattoo making originating from North Africa, India and the Middle East. The event is also meant to show the Keweenaw has a diverse variety of people, and to give everyone an opportunity to meet one another.

“Getting to meet your neighbor is the biggest part of [the festival] as a whole,” Gardner said. This is meant to be an experience, and I think people don’t realize how rich our our community is. We have people from many different types of backgrounds. We all know Finnish heritage runs deep in the community, but there are a lot of other ones present as well.”