Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service

Project: Mural painting & light remodeling at Roxbury Community College
Partners: Commonwealth Corps, Office of Governor Deval Patrick, Red Sox Foundation, Massachusetts Service Alliance
Date: January 17, 2009

To celebrate the national Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service, Governor Deval Patrick’s Commonwealth Corps and YouthBuild Boston teamed up to beautify some well-worn parts of Roxbury Community College. Corps members from across the state joined YouthBuild Boston students and staff for the day of service. Additionally, the Red Sox Foundation sent a contingent of staff and Red Sox Scholars (sixth-graders from Boston Public Schools) to help get the job done. In all, more than 150 volunteers pitched in.

Tasks completed included painting classrooms and a faculty lounge, painting murals in the RCC Little Sprouts day care center. Volunteers also painted canvasses and flower pots, which they then filled with plants, to help enliven some of the less colorful offices and rooms on campus. The Red Sox Scholars painted giant-sized alphabet letters and numbers, which will be hung on the fence of the RCC Little Sprouts day care playground.

This event got an early start on the national King Day of Service, officially observed on Monday, January 19 this year. In 1994 Congress transformed the federal holiday honoring Dr. King into a national day of community service grounded in his teachings of nonviolence and social justice. The aim was to make the holiday a day ON, where people of all ages and backgrounds come together to improve lives, bridge social barriers, and move our nation closer to the “Beloved Community” that Dr. King envisioned.