January 22, 2014

Reading Partners’ Staff and AmeriCorps Members Represent the True Spirit of Service on MLK Day

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a noteworthy event each year. It is a day to remember our past, reflect upon our progress, and to consider the state of our future. Most of all, it is a day to commemorate a great and brave human being whose image and legacy calls for civil rights, humanity, peace, and justice in america.

Perched upon these service minded values, the Corporation for National and Community Service issues a challenge each year: To spend the national holiday as a “day ON” serving your community.

On January 20, 2013, Reading Partners’ AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps*VISTA Members spent MLK day participating in service projects across the country. Reading Partners’ teams volunteered for projects ranging from book drives, to environmental restoration, to painting murals and more.

Reading Partners hosts over 170 AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps*VISTA members. AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps*VISTA members serve full time, for 11 and 12 months respectively with elementary schools and also supporting the capacity of Reading Partners operations, fundraising, and communications, in exchange for a living stipend.

In the true spirit of service, our exceptional AmeriCorps members serve additional volunteer hours in the community during National Days of Service throughout the year–enabling Reading Partners and other nonprofit organizations to set a precedence for service throughout the organization.

Here are some of the many projects that our AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps*VISTA members participated in, or hosted, during MLK Day 2014:

• In Dallas, AmeriCorps and Staff members served at City Square’s Opportunity Center. Reading Partners’ team painted old cubicle partitions, created motivational posters for Case Managers and Work Force Trainers, helped clean-up and beautify the surrounding neighborhood.

• In Washington, DC our team served at the Capital Area Food Bank and our Baltimore team volunteered with two organizations, Our Daily Bread and Moveable Feast, to donate, sort, and deliver food.

• Our Sacramento AmeriCorps team partnered with the North Natomas Transportation Management Association with 50 Bikes for 50 Kids. 50 students who were nominated to receive a bike paired up with volunteers to assemble their bike–students were nominated by local organizations based on a demonstration of content of character

• Reading Partners Tulsa partnered with City Year-Tulsa to paint murals throughout the Salvation Army Boys & Girls Club-North Mabee Center!

• Our Colorado team put together a community book drive to help collect books for our Take Reading Home Libraries, that culminated during MLK Day, in a collecting and sorting event. Different community partners (churches, high schools, other nonprofits like Volunteers of America and the United Way) and businesses (coffee shops, law offices) helped gather books for our book drive and community volunteers came in to help sort and box over 1,000 books that will go into reading centers.

• San Francisco/Bay Area AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps*VISTA members partnered up with Friends of Saucal Creek to plant native plants along Saucal Creek and work on a plant rescue mission in their local, Oakland based, nursery.

• In Los Angeles, Reading Partners teamed up with the Boys and
  Girls Club of Garden Grove to serve at the Blind Children’s Learning Center, making tactile books for blind children.

To learn more about our AmeriCorps, AmeriCorps*VISTA, or other volunteer opportunities, please visit readingpartners.org