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January 20,2003
 
 
For the past seven years, more than 100,000 people of all ages and backgrounds have celebrated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday by volunteering in the Greater Philadelphia Martin Luther King Day of Service.  The mission of this service day is to embrace Dr. King’s legacy by turning community concerns into citizen action.  Each year, Philadelphia's Day of Service has exceeded all expectations, becoming the largest King Day service event in the nation.
 
The King Day of Service presents a number of opportunities for students and teachers to serve in volunteer projects. In addition, teachers can initiate a program or encourage their students to take the lead in organizing a program that serves and educates the community about Dr. King.  In all projects, a reflection component about the meaning of the King Holiday is strongly encouraged.  Check out the website for reflection ideas and suggestions.  Below are a few examples of last year's projects in which students actively participated:

• Students helped design a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. mural and finished the day’s event with a student-led reflection activity about Dr. King. The project was designed to link creative arts with community involvement.  This project also showed that art could be a powerful tool to bring people together and engage in discussion about their community.  Students learned about the importance of  creating public gardens.  As a result removing weeds and trash, the area became more  welcoming and enabled the neighborhood to transform the space for public access. High school juniors and seniors from the Asian American community met at the Chinatown Learning Center to read books about Dr. King to young children.  The books and activities stressed themes of nonviolence, community service and how each individual can better the community.  
• >High school students learned organizational skills by planning and implementing a party with seniors at a nursing home.  The seniors told stories about the civil rights movement, and the students learned about how history directly affects them and how what they do “today” will directly affect future generations.