Thousands make lasting impact in MLK Day projects
1/22/2010
By Cynthia Hobgood
Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: what are you doing for others?” Each year, the Corporation for National and Community Service honors Dr. King’s legacy by asking Americans to make the King Holiday a national day of service. Events took place across the country with thousands of Americans volunteering their time.
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Here is just a small sample of the work that was done January 18:
- Some 70,000 people of all ages and backgrounds throughout the Philadelphia region volunteered in 1,100 service projects.
- In Washington, D.C., Greater DC Cares engaged 3,000 community members in service, making 2,000 sandwiches for the homeless, painting hundreds of murals, collegiate logos, and inspirational sayings at schools, assembling 5,000 burn kits, and more, making a lasting impact at 71 schools and nonprofits in the region.
- Students in Jefferson City, Missouri painted mural, honoring Dr. King’s principles of nonviolence.
- World Hunger Relief had approximately 477 volunteers in Waco, Texas working at nine gardens and putting in 1800 hours of service.
- City Year Rhode Island led 400 volunteers, ages 7 to 71 to beautify a local high school.
- In Birmingham, Alabama, Hands On led more than 2,000 volunteers in 50 projects across the city including elementary school cleanups, a Habitat for Humanity build, and cleanup of a local recreation area.
- In San Jose, California City Year volunteers helped the school librarian clean up and re-open a faltering middle school library.
- In Michigan, Geeks for Good, which works to match volunteers with social media, web, and graphic design experience to nonprofits who need them, created posters, redesigned flyers, wrote recommendations for website improvements, gave web hosting advice, created Facebook pages for seven nonprofit partners on over a dozen projects.
- AmeriCorps led approximately 125 volunteers in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, working at nine sites,
performing jobs such as mucking and gutting homes in the Flood Zone, clerical work for organizations and even some cooking.
America’s Promise Alliance MLK service project
America’s Promise Alliance continued our gardening project with the Alexandria-Olympic Boys & Girls Club (the Club) by working with the youth and volunteers to clean up the garden that was constructed
by Alliance volunteers and youth from the Club in 2009 and prepare for planting this Spring. The students were taught about the value of earthworms aerating a garden and had fun digging to see if their garden had earthworms working their magic.
Representatives from First Bloom were again on hand to teach the young people to appreciate nature and gardening skills by showing them how to plant tree saplings. Through hands-on immersion into the science of native plants and habitat restoration, the National Parks Foudnation’s First Bloom helps kids connect in new ways to their environment and develop an early passion for conservation.
Established in 1936, the Alexandria-Olympic Boys & Girls Club is one of the oldest clubs in greater Washington, serving several hundred young people each year in Alexandria and neighboring communities. In addition to being a safe place for the city’s young people to be during non-school hours, the Club provides more than a dozen educational and other programs. This includes: “Power Hour” homework sessions and tutoring; “Guitars not Guns,” where young people learn to play the guitar and read music; and “SMART Moves,” a weekly program that teaches young people about the dangers of drug, alcohol and tobacco use. Boys & Girls Clubs of America is a founding partner of America's Promise Alliance.