Hari Kumar Joins NPC Board

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GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass. — Hari Stephen Kumar of Williamstown has joined the board of Nonprofit Center of the Berkshires. 
 
Kumar is the founder of Convivo, a Berkshire-born small business that helps people build authentic communication skills for both professional and personal settings. With graduate degrees in engineering and communications, he has 20 years of facilitation and training experience in the tech industry and higher education sectors. Kumar is a graduate of E4All Berkshire County's Fall 2024 cohort, and member of the 1Berkshire Youth Leadership Program Steering Committee.
 
Officers of the NPC board include Emily Schiavoni (President), Hari Kumar (Vice President), Brian Berkel (Treasurer), and Cass Santos-China (Secretary). Additional board members include Kim Baker, Kevin Fleming, Tom Sharpe, and Laurie Werner. Former Board Chair, Dan Stanyon, is stepping down after serving two terms.
 
The Nonprofit Center of the Berkshires is now in its ninth year serving as an infrastructure and support organization for Berkshire County’s nonprofit sector.
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Mohican People Honored with Display in South Williamstown

By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff

The idea for the installation was inspired by a sculpture installation at Field Farm.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A granite installation in Bloedel Park next to the town's new traffic rotary honors the area's first residents and caps an effort that began five years ago.
 
The large granite wall across from the Store at Five Corners is adorned with emblems inspired by the symbols that decorate baskets of the Mohican people. It provides a testament to the presence of the ancestors of the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians, who, thousands of years ago, lived in the land now known as Berkshire County.
 
The black and red images of a leaf and bear claw are accompanied by an interpretive panel telling part of the story of the native people who fought with the Americans in their Revolutionary War and later were forcibly removed from the area in the late 18th century. 
 
Today, the Mohican people persist with nearly 1,600 enrolled members on or near a reservation in Wisconsin.
 
But the Stockbridge-Munsee Community has never lost its connection to its ancestral home, and, in the last decade, more of the area's contemporary residents have worked to recognize that link.
 
Bette Craig thought the then-planned roundabout would offer an opportunity to highlight that historic link.
 
"It all started in 2021 when MassDOT was having a Zoom meeting to tell the local community about it and get feedback and so forth," Craig said on Thursday. "At the time, I was the president of the South Williamstown Community Association. I was saying things about [the proposed project], and one of the community people listening was Polly Macpherson, who I knew from the League of Women Voters.
 
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