Leadership Monroe County hosts free Keys Together festival in Marathon

Free admission, a graduation ceremony and a packed schedule of family activities gave Leadership Monroe County’s Keys Together Spring Festival a built-in crowd-pleaser in Marathon. The event ran Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Oceanfront Park, the 7.94-acre passive park that is open to the public at no charge.

The festival served as the closing circle and graduation day for Leadership Monroe County’s Class XXXIII, turning a public park into both a celebration and an alumni reunion. The organization’s current class, which ran from October 2025 through May 2026, included Peter Amendola, David Burke, Maureen Dunleavy, Fritzie Estimond and Kathleen Filiaggi, M.D.

The day mixed civic networking with the kind of broad community turnout that can still matter in Monroe County, where public services, nonprofits and local business all depend on one another. More than 40 Monroe County nonprofit booths were set up alongside food trucks, artisan vendors, games, a kids’ zone, pony rides and the Key West Police Department’s horses, giving the festival a distinctly local feel rather than that of a standard fundraiser.

A raffle tied the event to a specific countywide need. Proceeds supported Keys AHEC and its #WeGiveAHEC campaign, which raises funds and awareness for Keys AHEC Children’s Clinics. Keys AHEC says its health centers provide no-cost medical and low-cost dental care to Monroe County schoolchildren, and that it operates 10 school-based health centers across the county.

Leadership Monroe County describes itself as an educational, nonpartisan, nonprofit community organization that builds constructive alliances in the Florida Keys. Its class curriculum spans tourism and history, environment, healthcare, military, human services, law and judiciary, education and government, arts, culture and media, and emergency management, a lineup that reflects how many sectors have to work together in a place as interconnected as Monroe County.

The festival format was not new. Leadership Monroe County used a similar public graduation celebration in 2024 with Leadership Spring GradFest and again in 2025 with Nautical Fun in the Sun, each blending class graduation, alumni connection and community outreach. That pattern has made the spring festival less like a single-day party and more like a yearly snapshot of how civic relationships are built across the Keys.