A group of about 40 people boarded trolleys Saturday night to travel around the city learning about the diverse cultures and religions that have gone into making this area’s rich heritage.

Billed as the first annual Brotherhood Tour, the event was sponsored by the Lycoming County Brotherhood Alliance.

“I think it turned out better than I expected,” according to Joe Smith, the organizer of the tour. “I think everyone had a good time. Every stop had something different to add and something fun to do.”

The hope was to show people their country is diverse, he said. “From its very beginning it’s been diverse. If we talk about diversity now, it’s just that we have different people coming in, but our country is a country of immigrants,” he added.

To showcase different aspects of the community, the group visited the American Rescue Workers warehouse and homeless shelter, the Bethel AME Church, Ohev Shalom Congregation, Holy Orthodox Church and the Gesang Verein Harmonia Club. At each stop the group learned about the cultural and spiritual background of each site. They also were treated to foods indicative of the different cultures.

Members of the Rescue Workers staff told the group about the various work they do in the community helping the homeless and those who are in need of help for whatever reason.

The group toured the warehouse and the shelter at the site. The Rescue Workers operates two homeless shelters at the Elmira Street location and a social services center across the street. They had about 600 residents in and out of the shelters last year and served about 76,000 meals in the kitchen and dining area. In addition, through their social services department, they help approximately 700 families with a three-day supply of food.

The next stop for the tour was the Bethel AME Church on Hepburn Street.

Bethel’s pastor, Cynthia Dallas-Kirk, shared how the African Methodist Episcopal denomination began when a group of slaves went to the altar to pray at a Methodist Episocopal Church and were told that they’d have to wait until everyone else in the church was finished. According to Pastor Dallas-Kirk, the slaves refused and when they had finished praying, left the church, never to return.

“The exact date and place of the first meeting is unknown, however in 1862 a small band of black citizens began to meet in a little red building 12-feet by 14-feet on the north bank of the Susquehanna River between what is known as Hepburn and West streets,” she said.

Several moves later the congregation built the church at its present location on Hepburn Street.

From Bethel AME, the tour traveled to Ohev Shalom Congregation on Cherry Street. There, Larissa Simon, president of the congregation, gave the history of the group.

According to Simon, many of the first congregants came from Germany. Ohev Shalom was first incorporated in 1905 and it moved to its present site in 1951. She added there was an elaborate ceremony that included a processional transfer of the Torahs.

“They walked the Torahs from downtown on Edwin Street all the way up here,” Simon said.

During the presentation at Ohev Shalom, Gabbi David Rosenzweig and Richard Staiman, a member of the congregation, displayed one of the Torahs for the members of the Brotherhood tour.

Members of the tour then went to Holy Orthodox Church in Loyalsock Township, where Virgil Fowler, a member of the congregation, told the group about the history. A more recent addition to the community, Holy Orthodox Church was officially dedicated in 1988, although the denomination has a rich historical heritage.

Finally the group ended the tour at the Gesang Verein Harmonia Club, where they were treated to musical selections and German food keeping with the history of the club. The building was built in 1895 because a group of members of St. Boniface wanted to get together to sing in their native German language.

One of the younger members of the tour, Sarah Weiss, said she wished there had been more people her age or younger on the tour.

“As a young person I’ve come to embrace now an understanding that there is more culture here than there once was. It was been really a neat experience to see what’s happening around Williamsport,” she said. “I posted on my Facebook page that we need to stop seeing each other as different and start realizing we’re all the same, we all want love and to be accepted for who we are.”

Her father, Elliott, who is a member of the board of the Brotherhood Alliance, said he was pleased with the first year of the tour.

“It brings a taste of diversity to a group of people. It was educational and informative,” he said.

“We’re not perfect, as we learned today at Bethel AME and how they had to start their church, but if we all work together, that’s the idea of our Brotherhood Alliance is to understand those differences,” Smith said in summing up the evening. ” I wanted to start with the people who immigrated here a while ago. To create an awareness, how we’re different, but we’re not really different. We’re people. Have the same dreams, the same goals.”