To round out Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration Week, Grand Valley State University hosted the MLK Day of Service and Solidarity, a service project coordinated through the Community Service Learning Center and the Division of Inclusion and Equity.

The day is a celebration of MLK’s passion for service, gathering student volunteers to work together within the GVSU and greater Grand Rapids communities. This year, about 100 students showed up to volunteer, representing different organizations across campus. Compared to last year, the turnout was almost doubled.

Melissa Baker-Boosamra, associate director of civic engagement and assessment in the Office of Student Life, said that she was surprised and happy by the turnout and that it means students are getting engaged with their local communities and wanting to make a difference.

“It’s an opportunity for GVSU students to live out the legacy of MLK,” she said. “Today, they can learn about the historical legacy and about team building within the community.”

The volunteers set out to their sites at 10 a.m. and volunteered until 1 p.m. There were six community partners that were chosen as volunteer sites, spanning from Grandville, Michigan to the East Hills neighborhood with a variety of different types of service.

Some volunteers helped sort clothes at the At-Tawheed Islamic Center, while others cleared snow and cleaned up an area in Wilcox Park that will be used as an ice rink.

“(The day of service) celebrates MLK’s legacy, but it also challenges students to live out the things he stood for,” Baker-Boosamra said.

The Day of Service in Solidarity worked with the Black Student Union and GVSU’s NAACP chapter in order to reach more students and be able to create a deeper sense of community.

After the volunteers returned to campus, they reflected on their service as a group and listened to a keynote presentation from history professor Louis Moore. Moore said that many people attribute civil rights and activism to MLK, forgetting that he also realized the importance of service within a person’s local community, so much so that he called the outward concern for others “the breadth of life” in his famous sermon about the dimensions of a complete life.

Lisa Oliver-King, executive director of Our Kitchen Table, a Grand Rapids-based nonprofit focused on improving health and the environment, also spoke about the importance of connecting service back to education and reflecting on the true meaning of service learning.