CSU Monterey Bay VIPs launch MLK Service Pledge Drive

 The largest MLK celebration near CSU Monterey Bay is the City of Seaside’s annual March and Celebration Program organized each year by the Monterey Peninsula Chapter of the National Pan-Hellenic Council.  The dilemma posed to our cohort of CSUMB VIP Fellows was how to include a service event that would not compete with this venerable local tradition.

The solution was the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 40 Days of Service Challenge.  We realized that year after year, the program had included exhortations from various key note speakers for community members to “get involved” – but this goal was left undefined and no concrete list of volunteer opportunities were provided.

So VIP Leader Steven Goings collaborated with the program’s principle coordinator, Alice Jordan, to design a volunteer service pledge drive that would kick off the MLK Day of Service and extend it through February’s Black History Month.   Our goal was to get 1000 hours of service pledged to selected non-profit organizations featured in the program as MLK Challenge Organizations with a focus on health and education.  Other prominent MLK Challenge Orgs other than our VIP sites included the Food Bank of Monterey County, the Salvation Army, African American HIV/AIDS Wellness, Kiwanis Club and the United Way Monterey County Volunteer Center.

When the day arrived, all our VIP Fellows were given volunteer roles to facilitate the set-up, smooth running, and break down of the event.  From working in the kitchen, to stuffing pledge cards in the program, to monitoring parking and of course picture taking, our Fellows were a real presence at the event.  We marched with both the AmeriCorps Week and MLK Day of Service banners and of course our VIP partner sites were among those official MLK Challenge Organizations that tabled at the event.

At the end of the program, VIP leader Steven Goings announced that the number of pledged hours collected came to a grand total of 2385!  Through our collaboration with the United Way, we also made community members aware of services they could take advantage of such as the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance Program and dialing “2-1-1” for a wide variety of health and human services.

Non-profits, VIP Fellows, program organizers and program goers alike all expressed appreciation and enthusiasm for this welcome new service element to the annual festivities and in fact we have heard from many organizations who vow to duplicate our efforts at local schools and other arenas.

All-in-all our VIP Fellows managed to put service closer to the center of our community’s celebrations of the legacy of Dr. King, raise the profile of both AmeriCorps and our local partner sites, serve in support of the march and program, and initiate a pledge drive that took minimal coordination with maximal impact.  We couldn’t be prouder of CSU Monterey Bay’s AmeriCorps VIPs.