Martin Luther King Jr. Day: What Did You Do?
On January 19, volunteers across the nation heeded the call to serve on Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK Jr.) Day. While approximately 5,000 projects held last year, more than 13,000 projects were held this year, according to the Web site www.mlkday.gov. Traffic on www.mlkday.gov more than doubled this year, and social media Web sites such as Facebook and Twitter were utilized in organizing volunteer efforts.
In Texas alone, thousands of volunteers and more than 500 AmeriCorps*Texas members participated in MLK Jr. Day service projects. Below are some of the stories of actions these AmeriCorps*Texas members and volunteers took within their communities.
- Amarillo Independent School District (ISD) AmeriCorps: Researched, prepared and presented lessons on segregation to students from several different grades.
- AmeriCorps for Community Engagement and Education (ACEE): With other organizations, planted over 120 trees in Austin area.
- AmeriCorps Kids Day Project: With other AmeriCorps members, painted a mural of President Barack Obama and Martin Luther King Jr. on a local clinic and organized a food drive.
- AVANCE - El Paso: With local partners, went door to door to nearly 200 homes, surveying and educating people about the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
- Catholic Charities of Central Texas: With collaboration from other organizations, helped people apply for state and federal benefits at a one-day wellness clinic for homeless people in Travis County.
- Central Dallas Ministries: With community partners, served breakfast and lunch to over 200 homeless individuals and worked on a partner organization's home renovation and rebuilding project.
- College for All Texans - Go Center Initiative: Held food drives in Austin and Bastrop; cleaned kennels and fed animals at a no-kill animal shelter in Killeen; taught kindergarteners about Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. and distributed information on college at a local event in San Antonio.
- College Forward: With collaborating organizations, worked on four parks in Austin and San Marcos to clean up polluted creeks and drainage systems, improve trail quality, dispose of litter and provide safety and visibility improvements.
- Community HealthCorps - Texas: With local partners on all projects, organized 13 gardening projects around Waco; gave blood pressure checks to homeless people and refugees in Brownsville.
- Edcouch-Elsa ISD - AmeriCorps Youth Harvest: Leveraged resources from several local businesses and community partners to paint, clean, renovate and do gardening for a local nonprofit.
- Environmental Corps: In conjunction with local nonprofits, planted over 200 trees and 30 native plants while also picking up 30 bags of trash in different parks in Austin.
- Keep Austin Housed: In collaboration with local nonprofits and businesses, organized second annual wellness clinic for homeless people, where they provided shoes, socks, haircuts and employment services to some of the over 450 attendees.
- Habitat for Humanity AmeriCorps Texas: With help from community partners on all projects, spent four days working with families and building colonias in Laredo; cleaned garbage and debris from a local community and landscaped a Habitat for Humanity subdivision in McKinney; worked on disaster recovery sites in Houston.
- Jumpstart Texas: With an after-school program, cleaned up and painted a mural at a local apartment complex.
- The Mentoring Coalition (TMC) MentorCorps Project: Educated volunteer fair attendees on the importance of volunteering and on opportunities available in Lufkin.
- Project Transformation: Sorted and organized the donation room at a local men's homeless shelter in Dallas, transferred children's items to the women and children's shelter and served and had lunch with homeless men; organized the library for a Dallas after-school program.
- Public Allies - Texas: Talked to San Antonio fifth graders about what makes people unique and similar across the lines of race, religion and gender, and helped them write down their dreams and release them attached to balloons in a ceremony.
- Schulenburg Weimar In Focus Together (SWIFT) AmeriCorps: Collected, sorted and distributed 13 boxes of food and some cash donations for both the Schulenburg Area Food Pantry and Weimar Ministerial Alliance Community Food Pantry.
- Texas Agri-Life Upper Rio Grande Water Conservation Corps: Along with other organizations, planned a food drive, collected and sorted the donations and participated in a youth-oriented event to encourage additional donations.
- Travis County Children and Parents Involved in Technology and Literacy (Travis County CAPITAL) AmeriCorps Project: Conducted blanket and toiletry drive for local homeless shelter's cold weather response while also making 15 blankets and scarves by hand for the homeless.
- United Way El Paso (UWEP) - Character Skills for Life: With other groups, held a three-week food drive that brought in 23 tons of food for local nonprofits.
