My name is Melvina Charles and my community’s name is Mount Barclay. I live in a community that values both the past and the future. Today my community is successful because of both the past and the future.

The past helps us to understand so many skills that are helpful now, and that will also help us in the future. My grandmother once told me that the past helps us to know where we came from so that we may know where we are going. In the past, my grandmother also taught me how to be good to people at all times because it will help me when I get older.

In my community, we believe that the past makes us know who we truly are. We celebrate so many events today that happened in the past because of the good memories. So my community values the past very much. It’s important for us to value our past because without the past we wouldn’t know about the origin of our community, what our ancestors did, their mistakes and skills.

In my community we also value the future. The future gives us the opportunity to change our community into a better place that we can all live in and be happy together as one people. The future of my community is when we will apply all the good things that we learn from the past in order to make our community a great place. We value the future because the future gives us the second chance to right our wrongs and learn from our past; doing this will make us united as one people. The future is important because by having second chances and learning from the past, we will know where we are from and where we are going.

Finally, both the past and future of my community are valued and linked to each other. The prosperity of our community, including history and memorable dates that are now celebrated were once events and efforts made in the past. There are skills from the past that are now benefiting us for the future of our community, skills like the building of houses, sewing country cloths, baking, farming, making soaps, fishing, and hunting. These are all skills that are being used for the future but were practiced in and learned from the past.