More than 200 students from across the city came together this weekend to serve Nashville for this year’s MLK Joint Day of Service. Volunteers from Belmont, Fisk, Lipscomb, Meharry, Nashville State, Tennessee State, Trevecca and Vanderbilt honored the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. by helping to alleviate hunger in Middle TN, around the nation and throughout the world through projects around the city.
After gathering at Fisk for fellowship, orientation and a kick-off rally in the campus’s historic campus where Dr. King spoke when he visited Fisk, students divided into groups and hit the road to take part in one of the day’s 14 service projects. Opportunities across the city included:
- Working at Habitat ReStore where volunteers cleaned, organized and unloaded donations to assist with selling product
- Volunteering at Preston Taylor Ministries to clean the organization’s building and grounds, prepping for an upcoming event
- Cleaning, sorting, organizing and working throughout the neighborhood at Room in the Inn
- Helping with landscaping at PENCIL Foundation’s new location, led by horticulturalists from Gaylord Opryland. A second group working with PENCIL packed a van and truck with school supplies and unloaded them at the organization’s warehouse
- Preparing donated books to be distributed to local kids throughout Davidson County with Book’em. This social volunteer activity allowed participants to share the gift of reading with area families
- Mulching, laying soil, pulling weeds and moving compost bins for Trap Garden at Johnson Middle School
- Assisting The Knowles Home Butterfly and Courtyard Garden with repairs, grooming and planting. These teams worked in each courtyard to trim, plant and mulch before heading inside to assist with activities for residents including playing billiards, puzzles and card games
- Breaking down boxes, cleaning office space and assisting with computer data entry and filing at World Baptist Office
- Packing food, toiletries and cleaning supplies at Feed the Children
- Working in the garden and greenhouse at Treveeca Urban Farm
- Sorting potatoes at St. Andrew’s Society Potato Sort
- Packing meals at Rise Against Hunger
- Writing notes for active duty service personnel at Cards for Veterans
Director of Service Learning at Belmont Tim Stewart said, “Special thanks to the Belmont students who spent a cold spring day volunteering with 200+ other students from around the city at more than a dozen different projects! I’m glad that so many young people from Belmont and nearly a dozen other colleges and universities could set an example of what can be accomplished when we come together. It was a very powerful demonstration of Dr. King’s statement that ‘Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve!'”
