Moms Meet, Church Serves & Cunning Honored

“It's moms helping moms,” Kathy Zucker explained to About Town as we sat on the stage edge inside the Rue Building chatting and watching more than 150 women visit vendor tables at the first ever Metro Mom Expo on Saturday.

Zucker, a mother, wife, part-time marketing consulting and Hoboken Patch told us she and some other local mothers (Rebecca Farrell, Kim Stoke & Jenifer Semenza) thought to organize the expo after meeting in March with their Hoboken based Mom Consulting Network.

They devised two goals, first, to organize resources for parents, especially new ones who might find that raising kids is even tougher than everyone told them it would be.

“People are overwhelmed with parenting,” Zucker said. “We want to give them a place to get their questions answered in a friendly environment.” Zucker explained that while some aspects of parenting are time-tested, others such as what sort of stroller to buy fall into flux whenever product designs change.

Zucker said the other goal was to help promote local mothers who stay home to take care of their families but who also want to maintain their careers. Zucker herself was a rising executive in a marketing firm before she had children. While she now raises her kids at home she still also works part-time as a consultant. Her parenting column for Hoboken Patch often ruminates over helping women find the right balance between family and career.

As an offshoot of the Mom Consulting Network the expo organizers first offered half of their vendor tables to professional members within the larger group. They then used this base to attract other local businesses that cater to the parenting industry, such as Kidville, and . The expo also featured seminars from experts such as chiropractor Dr. Laura Brayton, time organizer Dr. Karin Stewart and food sociologist Dr. Dina Rose.

During Rose's presentation on how to feed kids with healthy food during summer trips, About Town sat next to Alyssa Greenberg, mother of a newborn. Greenberg told us she found the expo to be helpful.

“It's a great opportunity to meet other moms and local business owners,” she said.

Earlier that Saturday About Town met with members of the Hoboken Grace Church who had gathered at Church Square Park for their second annual 1Day Hoboken community service event.

“This (community service) is really the heart of what we do at our church,” said Pastor Chris High. “We want to show how much we love and want to serve Hoboken.”

High said the church contacted several Hoboken institutions to ask how its members could volunteer. After gathering in the park the nearly 75 volunteers then broke into teams and plowed into over a dozen projects including planting flowers in front of the Hoboken Public Library, cleaning the beaches at Maxwell Park and Sinatra Park, organizing books by age group at the Jubilee Center, collecting donations to stock the city food banks and painting at the Housing Authority. High said they had also arranged with the city to brighten the yellow no parking lines at curb edges, but that they had to postpone the work due to rain.

This past Tuesday About Town also attended the party Hoboken Charter School threw to honor its outgoing board of directors chairperson, Helen Cunning.

More than 50 Hoboken Charter board members, parents, administrators and teachers gathered at at to present Cunning with a plaque commemorating her service. She had served on the board for over ten years and saw her niece and nephew attend the school.

“It's terrific, but it's unnecessary,” a modest Cunning told About Town. “It's been my honor to see Hoboken Charter become a great success story.”

Hoboken Charter principal Ria Grosvenor on the other hand told us she found Cunning well deserving of credit.

“Helen is the epitome of what the school tries to be, community oriented and compassionate,” she said.

Alan Skontra was a big dork who never went anywhere. Then he started writing the About Town column for Patch, and now he's everywhere. Have a hot tip on an event in Hoboken? Send an invitation, questions and comments too, to alanskontra@hotmail.com, and peep his tweets @ twitter.com/alanskontra.