At the start of each new year, our nation comes together on Martin
Luther King, Jr. Day to celebrate equal rights and, in honor of Dr.
King’s humanitarian efforts, to serve our neighbors. On Monday, January
16, volunteers from Virginia Wesleyan College will join Western Bayside
Communities United and students from Bayside High School for a community
day at Heritage United Methodist Church (located at the eastern edge of
campus on Baker Rd., 9 a.m.-noon).
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service event, themed “I Have a Dream for My Family," will focus on families helping families.
Parents, their children, and members of our surrounding community will
enjoy a pancake breakfast and spend quality time assembling snack bags
for area school children, packaging socks collected by the church for
donation, making “thank you” cards and cookies for police and
firefighters serving Western Bayside, listening to stories about Dr.
King, and articulating dreams for their own families through various
creative activities. This is the College’s fourth annual Martin Luther
King, Jr. Day of Service. We are most grateful for our continued
partnership with Western Bayside Communities United as well as Bayside
High School. If you are interested in volunteering for this event,
please visit the Office of Community Service (Room 25, Jane P. Batten
Student Center).
This celebration characterizes the ongoing
collaborative relationship between Virginia Wesleyan College and the
neighboring Western Bayside community. For more than 25 years, the
College’s community service efforts—including elementary school
mentoring programs like Marlins Read and Marlins Count and the more
recent Readings With Wesleyan adult education program—have made a
tremendous difference in this area.
The VWC community will have
an additional opportunity to reflect on the life of Martin Luther King,
Jr. on Monday evening with the presentation of “Is There a Promised
Land?: Exhaustion in a Post-MLK World” (Boyd Dining Center, 7-8:30
p.m.). This discussion, moderated by Barbara Hamm Lee, host of the WHRV
radio talk show Another View, will examine excerpts of Dr. King's
last speech, "I've Been to the Mountaintop," and consider how racial
justice and equality in the United States have (or have not) changed
since his death in 1968. This Winter Session program is co-sponsored
with the Center for the Study of Religious Freedom.
I encourage
you to take part in these special events as we commemorate Martin Luther
King, Jr. and his legacy of strength, resilience and compassion.
