Service in Honor of Martin Luther King Jr
“Everybody can be great … because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.” -Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
AmeriCorps VISTA members made most of the day and provided service to the local community. The VISTA program encourages participants to spend the holiday providing service to the community in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr’s teachings and influence.
Jenel Bloom, Natalie Wilson, Carly Kyte, Garrison Daly, and Beth Williams (Food Corps), partnered with the Food Partnership Council to assist with their It’s in the Bag program. They prepared bags to provide nutritious and easy to prepare meals for local youths that may not have meals over the weekend. So far this year of It’s in the Bag, the program provided 432 meals to children in our community.
AmeriCorps Vista, Brooke Klaess, worked with DSVS’s Travis Burdick and Sam Italiano. They did case studies on school integration in the south during the civil rights movement and the Children March in Birmingham Alabama, along with activities identifying barriers Roosevelt Middle School has and what actions they can take to break these barriers. At the end of the day they ended with a school wide assembly with an Ignite your Mind talk focused on Dream, Discover, and Go.
Katelynn Essig, City Sustainability Coordinator and Energy Corps, member spent 3 days on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation weatherizing 30 homes with her Energy Corps cohort. They installed light-weatherization materials including weather-stripping around doors, plastic on windows, and wrapping water heater tanks with insulation. They also presented to an adult education course on ways to conserve energy in the home and how to perform a do-it-yourself home energy audit.
AmeriCorps members serve our community full-time for one year. To learn more about what they do, stop by the Foundation at 122 S Hauser or call 446-2820 and get connected.
