LEGO Interactive Exhibit - Play-Well TEKnologies, an organization that offers LEGO-inspired.engineering classes for students in Kindergarten through 8th grade, presented an interactive LEGO exhibit in the Matthews Community Center. On that Saturday, festival visitors were able to partake in the building of the exhibition which was then on display for the rest of the festival.
Parade Length - the Matthews Alive Parade is one of the longest Labor Day Parades in the Southeast. The Parade included over 100 participants and lasted about an hour and a half.
Parade Start Time - the Matthews Alive Parade will be started at 9:30 this year, an hour earlier than past years. Festival organizers hoped that this change allowed parade participants and attendees to be cooler in the heat and limit train interruptions. Since the weather this year was already beautiful, the earlier start time only made the experience that much better.
Mission - Matthews Alive is a 501(c)3 nonprofit whose mission is "provide an opportunity for local non-profit groups to raise funds for their organization to benefit the community." Matthew's Alive has donated over 1.6 million dollars to local nonprofits and lists 34 organizations who benefitted this year.
Volunteers - The festival is almost entirely volunteer operated. Over 2000 volunteers assisted during the festival, as well as the months leading up to it. Organizations who receive funds from Matthews Alive provided many of the volunteers for the festival who helped with everything from ticketing, to trash pickup, to managing the games.
