300 volunteers participate in Day of Service

Volunteers painted a wall mural inside Bret Harte Elementary School during the University of Chicago’s MLK Day of Service on Saturday, Jan. 18. Photo courtesy of Eddie Quinones
Volunteers painted a wall mural inside Bret Harte Elementary School during the University of Chicago’s MLK Day of Service on Saturday, Jan. 18. Photo courtesy of Eddie Quinones

300 volunteers participate in Day of Service

BY TIA CAROL JONES

Students from the University of Chicago and University of Chicago Lab School volunteered their time and participated in community service projects for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day of Service on Saturday, Jan. 18.

Young people and adults were involved in projects at sites that included Share Your Soles, in Pullman; Senior Suites, in South Shore; First Presbyterian Chicago, in Hyde Park; Bret Harte Elementary School, in Hyde Park; FEATHERFIST, in South Shore; and Rise Against Hunger.

The service project was a collaboration between the University of Chicago University Community Service Centers, Lab School and Woodlawn Charter School.

Kafi Moragne-Patterson is the director of student civic engagement with the University of Chicago. She said a couple of the locations have been partners in the service day in the past. “We like to continue to build on those partnerships,” she said.

There were 300 volunteers of all ages who participated in the service day. They packaged rice meals and clothing for the homeless, painted the gym at First Presbyterian, painted a mural at Bret Harte and played board games at Senior Suites.

Moragne-Patterson said what was exciting was that there were children involved. “This is the only one where children were involved. We had babies playing board games with seniors at Senior Suites, we had babies packaging food,” she said.

Moragne-Patterson said the Martin Luther King Day of Service is one of seven service projects the Community Service Centers does each year adding, while she knows it is a single day of service, they want to use it as a springboard to get people of diverse backgrounds to do service. “We want families to be comfortable navigating the South side,” she said. “This is serving as a gateway to the city of Chicago broadly.”

The Share Your Soles Foundation in Pullman was a new partner this year. The non-profit organization, which was founded in 1999, provides new and like-new shoes to people in need all around the world. Mona Purdy, founder, said there were 60 volunteers at her site. “We get thousands of shoes donated every week. They sorted every pair of incoming shoes we had in,” she said.

Purdy said she felt empowered and felt there was unity. “This really resonated with our purpose, the community coming together for the greater good, it was wonderful,” she said. She added it was impactful to see people of all ages volunteer their time.

“When you see parents working side by side with their children, it is impactful,” Purdy said. “When the group left me, it was emotional.”

Thomas Toney is the service-learning coordinator at Lab School. He recommended Share Your Soles Foundation as a partner for the service day because his students chose it as a project in Fall 2019.

“We had about 28 students and they came back with glowing reviews so we decided to explore the potential to have a more formal partnership with them. Then, the MLK Service Day came up,” he said.

Toney said the student’s involvement in the day of service speaks to their ability to see themselves as engaged community members. “When that happens, we get some students who come up with some incredibly imaginative ideas,” he said.

Moragne-Patterson said it feels good to know people are volunteering in the community.

“I think we have a ways to go, but these are moments where we see there are a vast amount of people committed to the creation of a better world.”

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