Martin Luther King Jr. once famously said, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is ‘What are you doing for others?’” This year for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we decided to come together as a company and give back to our local community.
Our founder and CEO, Brian, has long been involved with an organization called City Year. City Year’s goal is to bridge the gap in high-poverty communities between the support that students actually need, and what their schools are designed and resourced to provide. In doing so, they help increase graduation rates across the country, and make an impact in the lives of the students they serve. How do they do it? They utilize an unique, holistic approach called Whole School Whole Child. A group of highly trained young adults provide individualized support to at-risk students, while also establishing an overall positive learning environment in the schools throughout America that need them the most. They provide one-on-one or group tutoring, run after school clubs and service projects, lead energetic morning greetings, take attendance and call late or absent students, make positive phone calls home to inform parents on their child’s progress, and organize and lead activities, celebrations, and projects to improve the school and community.
For Martin Luther King Jr. Day, City Year ran service projects all over the country at their partner schools. The Mack Weldon team was assigned PS 75X School of Research and Discovery in the Bronx where there were over 50 different projects being carried out by volunteers. Our project was to help paint a mural on one of the hallway walls. The mural we were assigned was of Peppa Pig, a British preschool animated television series about an anthropomorphic female pig named Peppa. The chosen scene was a day at the carnival for Peppa and her friends. For four hours, we painted the intricate mural, completing everything but some of the finer details that our City Year friends finished later that day. Below is a picture of our almost completed masterpiece. It was a wonderful experience, and our hope is that in the coming years we can expand our day of service to continue making a real impact in our home city of New York.
The Weekly Brief 