Boston Scenes

The young performers that make up the Boston Children’s Chorus have plenty to sing about this year — starting with the news that their sixth annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day concert, scheduled for Jan. 19, 2009, will be broadcast live across the nation. For more on the chorus, click here. (Photo courtesy of the Boston Children’s Chorus)

A group of children gathers outside the Bwafwano Community School in Zambia. In the African nation, which is roughly the size of Texas, the need for basic health care services is huge: More than 70 percent of population lives on less than $1 a day, and nearly 1 million people suffer from HIV/AIDS. In collaboration with Bwafwano, a group whose name means “helping one another,” Boston Combined Residency Program in Pediatrics (BCRP) resident Julie Herlihy, M.D., M.P.H., helped train community health workers in palliative care and basic pediatric care. (Photo courtesy of BCRP)

Former New England Revolution striker Khano Smith (right) visits with Shanice Smalling Bobb, a student at John Marshall Elementary School in Dorchester and one of 24 Bay State elementary school students selected as winners of the 2008 Write to Honor Program by Boston-based nonprofit America SCORES. Each winner receives a stone paver engraved with the name of the student’s honoree permanently installed in the Mothers’ Walk on the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. Shanice honored Nancy Dickson. (Photo courtesy of America SCORES)

The Massachusetts Alliance of Portuguese Speakers (MAPS) has announced that Mayor Thomas M. Menino will receive the organization’s highest honor, its “Person of the Year Award,” at the MAPS Annual Awards Gala next May. MAPS Executive Director Paulo Pinto (left) and Board President Joseph J. Vasconcelos (right) announced the award recipients last month. Also in attendance for the announcement were three women who will join Menino in receiving MAPS awards next year: Rhea Tavares (second from left), Maria dos Santos (center) and Maria José Soares. (Photo courtesy of MAPS)

Archivists at the National Archives Center in Waltham, Mass., recently announced the receipt of over 1,000 volumes of Civil War records previously held in Washington, D.C. The records, detail the activities of the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau, which arrested deserters, enrolled men for the draft, enlisted volunteers and compiled various statistics. The records “offer a glimpse into every city and town of New England … and reveal what New England was like in 1863 and 1864,” according to historian and Civil War expert Joseph Keefe. (Photos courtesy of National Archives, Northeast Region)