MLK Day/Life of Service Ideas

Hello Friends! Happy Marting Luther King, Jr. Birthday! I hope that you have amazing plans to celebrate Dr. King's birthday and achievements in some manner today or this week - though I know that Black and Into Green readers are celebrating his legacy everyday through your actions. I was evaluating today's activities on the basis of what I thought would be Dr. King approved. While there are many offerings scheduled for today, most were just not that deep - in my humble opinion. The opportunities seemed to be more family centered entertainment activities with some educational offerings in the mix - which is great if you have young children, but my young child is a freshman in college and many of you don't even have kids!! So now what? Fortunately, I found some MLK Day of service activities through the All For Good and MLK Day websites, which provides information on a variety of service projects itemized by, your local area, statewide, virtual, micro and my favorite category - self-directed. I found a local area project cleaning, organizing and sorting items for the Kids In Need Resource Center. Serving meals, coat donation and a poverty simulation were some of the other options, but what really caught my eye were the self-directed projects. These projects are attractive for a number of reasons, 1) Variety 2) Action plan templates 3) Flexible 4) Environment and Community Garden Options and 5) Control. Some projects  (planting a community garden) require more planning than others (letter writing), but there is enough variety and flexibility for you to create something that fits your resource availability and constraints. I love the idea of the self-directed projects because it gives an individual or an organization an opportunity to extend the spirit of  MLK Day beyond a day or week  and I think Dr. King would approve. In fact, I love this idea so much that I am thinking about making a small contribution towards a project that I like in the form of a contest. Get back to you later this week on that one!