Organizers for the Center for Student Leadership, Ethics and Public Service’s ninth annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Service Challenge said the response from hopeful participants exceeded their expectations.
Those who wanted to participate applied online and were accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis at the beginning of the semester, and Josh Davis, a student leadership consultant for CSLEPS, said the 60 available spaces were filled within 36 hours.
“That’s the fastest a Martin Luther King Challenge has filled up,” Davis, a freshman in biological sciences, said.
The event will be held Saturday, Jan. 26 at Ligon Middle School in downtown Raleigh. Sixty volunteers will meet with around 60 middle school students there to make different items to donate to the Salvation Army.
One group of volunteers will make healthcare kits with bandages, pain medicine, hair combs, soap and other grooming items, Derek Gatlin, also a consultant for CSLEPS and junior in sociology, said.
Another group will make around 40 fleece blankets, which will be sent to the SA’s homeless shelter along with the health care kits, Davis said.
Participants will also make between 400 and 450 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to donate to the SA’s soup kitchen.
Last year, the challenge was organized with Stop Hunger Now, and Davis said their focus has changed a bit.
“We’re addressing hunger and the homelessness issue instead, which has been our theme all fall,” he said.
Nzingha Reel, a service leadership consultant and psychology and criminology double major, said King’s message that “everyone can serve” is what they want people to remember.
“With a servant’s heart, people are more compassionate, [and] more caring,” she said. “We are all equal, no matter what our status is.”
And while the project has received donations from different organizations, Davis said their goal was centered in service.
“Our target has not been a monetary value,” he said. “We wanted to shoot for as many health care kits and blankets and sandwiches as we could.”
Before they make these materials, the groups will watch a step show by the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, as well as a video clip featuring King, Gatlin said.
Gatlin is serving as emcee for the event, and said he wants the focus to be on all aspects of King’s message.
“Martin Luther King, Jr. wasn’t just a civil rights leader,” he said. “He was also fighting for labor rights, [and] he also helped start the environmental justice movement. He was adamantly and publicly against the Vietnam war, and we seem to forget that those weren’t popular positions to have at that time.”
According to Davis, their spirit of service shouldn’t be restricted to one project.
“We want this to be an ongoing process,” he said. “It really is a call to action.”
