The Mariposa Museum in Peterborough has named Melissa Brooks as director of education programs. A member of the museum’s leadership team, Brooks will guide the expansion of the museum’s state-wide educational outreach to schools, home-school famies, summer camps, libraries, and other special audiences.
Brooks grew up in Peterborough and has lived in Jaffrey, Walpole, and now Merrimack. She was exposed to many cultures at an early age. Her mother, Renee Pomponio, a stylist for over 20 years at Plaza Beauty Salon II in Peterborough and now at the salon in the Village at RiverMead, was born in Vienna, Austria, and immigrated to the U.S. when she was 12, along with her mother, sister, and brother, shortly after World War II. She taught her daughter how to make Austrian foods and a bit of the German language, and told stories of what it was like to live as a child in Austria. Brooks’s grandmother also lived in Africa (Monrovia, Liberia), North Africa (Morocco), Thailand, the Philippines, and Greece and exposed Brooks to these cultures through storytelling and objects from these cultures which decorated Brooks’s childhood home.
Brooks’s father’s grandparents immigrated from Naples, Italy, and Switzerland. She has a fond memory of, as a child, visiting relatives from each side of the family and hearing German spoken from her mother’s side and Italian spoken from her father’s side. Stories of Naples and the Italian language gave Brooks a sense of this European country.
Brooks encourages inquires and communication from schools, home schools, and the community abroad on how the Mariposa can assist them in their cultural experience. She can be reached at education@mariposamuseum.org or by calling 924-4555.