MLK Day!

SO. Yesterday, as you may know, was Martin Luther King day! I was pretty nervous about how our project was going to go since it was such a huge event (we've been planning since October), but it seems we pulled it off.

We cleaned and painted all 17 rooms at the housing shelter. The time I spent recruiting volunteers paid off - we had at least 150 people show up, probably closer to 200 (we'll do final counts on Thursday). We had a pretty good article written about the whole thing in the Cape Cod Times (you can read it here).

I actually spent the majority of the day over at a local church, supervising all of the sewing projects I had organized. My team of about 25 volunteers managed (after a little initial chaos) to make 40 sets of curtains from a hodgepodge of bargain fabric. Another group of members took a mural we made over to the local Boys and Girls Club, where some kids learned about Dr King and then decorated it in the spirit of his "I have a dream" speech. The result was fantastic, and we'll be hanging it in a community room at the shelter. We also built 4 benches for outside the rooms, and put plants, new lamps, shelves, and energy efficient bulbs in every room.

My sewing room:

The blank mural:


Freshly painted wall with our fabulous curtains:

The whole crew:


I barely sat down the entire day and the whole Corps was exhausted when it was over, but the staff and residents were thrilled with the results and it seems like the volunteers had some fun too! One of the long-time staff from our program gave us a HUGE compliment and said this may have been the most successful MLK day yet. It was fun, but I admit that I'm looking forward to some time working on smaller projects for the next few months.

Today I was able to spend my lunch hour watching the inauguration with some fellow members at our office. Truly a historic day, and I think Obama's call to service hit a little more close to home after our work yesterday.