New Toolkit for MLK Day of Service

Posted by on October 6, 2006

The 2007 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service is rapidly approaching, and it?s shaping up to be the biggest and best ever.

I hope the every single member of the national service family ? whether you are part of Senior Corps, AmeriCorps, VISTA, NCCC, and Learn and Serve America ? will lead or participate in this year?s King Day of Service. Service is not only a powerful way to honor Dr. King – it will benefit your community and help your organization recruit new volunteers and partners.

I especially encourage national service programs in our expansion cities (listed below) to connect with the local organizers and put your muscle into making it a big and successful day. These expansion cities were chosen by our King Day of Service grantees for extra attention and focus this year. We are trying to replicate the extraordinary success of Philadelphia, where some 50,000 volunteers serve on 600 projects each year. Building to that level of participation takes years of planning, coordination, and partnering. To jumpstart that growth, we hope all national service partners will work with the King Day lead agencies in these expansion cities.

The King Day of Service is a great way to bring people together and meet a local community need. It is also part of a larger national movement to expand volunteering. Across the volunteer sector, we have embraced an ambitious but achievable goal to help grow volunteering by 10 million more volunteers by 2010. The King Day of Service is a powerful opportunity to open the door to new volunteers who may start for a day but continue throughout the year. If you have implemented King Day of Service projects in the past, I encourage you to think bigger this year, and grow community participation by at least 20 percent.

To help you plan and implement the King Day of Service, a planning toolkit and marketing materials can be found at http://www.mlkday.gov. Over the next couple of months, we will continue to update that site ? adding reflection guides, resources to engage young people, materials that will support a sustainable expansion effort, and a technology tool that will allow you to both register your project and your volunteers. Please watch for those enhancements.

Finally, I also want to remind you that January is National Mentoring Month. As you plan your King Day of Service activities, I hope that you will consider how to use the King Day of service to honor mentors in your community, recruit new mentors, and provide training to mentoring programs that will have an impact throughout the year and for years to come.

If you have questions or need help with ideas or connecting with other grantees, please e-mail mlkday@cns.gov or call Rhonda Taylor at 202-606-6721.

I look forward to the best King Day of Service ever.

Sincerely,

David Eisner, CEO
Corporation for National and Community Service