In honor of the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., the University of Mississippi’s Center for Community Engagement hosted their annual MLK Day of Service on Feb. 17. A crowd of Oxonians, as well as UM students, united to share their passion and care for the Oxford community.
Though the day commenced and concluded at the Jackson Avenue Center, the outreach of this event expanded all the way to Abbeville, Miss. During the four-hour day of service the volunteers chose between five community organizations to visit and serve.
The UM Center for Community Engagement collaborated with their service partners Jumpstart of UM, UM’s Career Center, the Animal Resource Center of Oxford, Gordon Community and Cultural Center of Lafayette County and Oxford Community Garden for this event.
Before volunteers dispersed to their service sites, the UM Center for Community Engagement offered refreshments to volunteers and encouraged them to visit their voter registration table, managed by the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.
Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Community Engagement Shawnboda Mead shared a powerful quote from King, then opened the floor for reflections from community members and volunteers.
“‘Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love,’” Mead said, quoting King.
Mead spoke with volunteers about the power of the love for a community and how that power then manifests in work and outreach in that community.
“You all being here today is a testament to your own commitment to make a positive difference. So may we continue to try for a world where our actions are guided by the strength of our convictions and the warmth of our hearts,” Mead said.
As volunteers were dismissed into the community, the UM Center for Community Engagement allowed volunteers to choose the project in which they felt led to participate in.
Volunteers had a variety of opportunities, from making literacy kits with Jumpstart to cleaning and organizing the career closet of UM’s Career Center.
While some assisted the Animal Resource Shelter in cleaning and spending time with its residents, others organized the library and cleaned the yards of Abbeville schools with Gordon Community & Cultural Center.
Some service project members prepared gardening beds with the Oxford Community Garden, made dog toys for the ARC and made teething rings for the babies for the North Mississippi Exchange Family Center.
Each service site had an assigned service leader that checked in volunteers, assigned different duties and shared King’s’s sentiments about service with volunteers.
Service leader of the ARC service project and UM NAACP President Meghan Curry shared that the term “service leader” is merely a label, and that she felt her true calling was to volunteer.
“This is my third year being a service leader, and each year I find myself growing in the work that the CCE and the LOU does. I don’t look at myself as a service leader, but as a consistent volunteer striving and showing up for change,” Curry, a public health and health sciences major, said.
Volunteer and exercise science major Breanna Humphrey shared similar sentiments about service and its meaning in her life.
“I feel like it’s necessary for us to give back and help the community that we’re in. I’ve been here since my freshman year and I’m currently a junior. Oxford has been good to me, so I feel that it’s necessary to give back,” Humphrey said.
After completing their service tasks, the volunteers returned to the JAC to reflect on their time spent in the community and how to expand their outreach.
Kathryn Kidd, MLK Day of Service coordinator and assistant director for community partnerships for the Center for Community Engagement, ] conveyed the importance of this event and the critical nature of volunteering.
“I think that it’s a reminder of what he (King) wanted from his life, which was to serve others in the community and build community through service. It’s just an opportunity to kind of remind ourselves to give back to our community and also appreciate the people we’re with,” Kidd said.
