Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service

Today is a day for remembrance of a great man AND an opportunity to be of service. Across the country, people are gathering to volunteer and help out in their communities. We've gathered a few ideas from Serve.gov for projects that specifically help children, from coast to coast.

New York: Ongoing opportunity to Mentor a Teenager at icouldbe.org in NY, NY

Boston: Bring Childrens Books and Gifts to Shriners Hospital in Boston through 1/20

Chicago: Ongoing opportunities to help Project YES! to complete service large service projects at local elementary schools in Chicago.

San Francisco: Help Create an Anthology of Kids Autobiographies with Streetside Stories as a volunteer copy editor in San Francisco. Now through May.

Los Angeles: Help out at College Financial Aid Workshops on January 30th throughout the LA region.

These are just a few examples - to find others in cities towns all across the country, visit serve.gov and simply plug in your zip code.

Have a wonderful Martin Luther King Jr. day!

(Image: Gawker)

Comments (3)

Aw! Great photo, I've never seen this pic. Aren't his kids so cute?!

Great post -- another idea I'd like to see covered is volunteering you can do with your (preschool-age) kids. I'd like to do more in the community, but I have my kids with me 90% of the time, so I'd like to find stuff I could do that would be practical to bring them along.

This isn't service related, but a neat project my kids and I did was to paint a mural of Dr. King following a paint-by-number style project by art teacher/blogger Kathy Barbro.
You can find it here:
http://www.artprojectsforkids.org/2010/01/martin-luther-king-mural.html

She charges $5 to download it, and then you print it off your computer.

It was very easy and the end result was pretty amazing, especially considering my daughters are 2 and 4 (the 2 year old's role was pretty limited, but the 4 year old did more than half of the mural).

You can see ours here:
http://kidsparties.about.com/b/2010/01/18/happy-martin-luther-king-day.htm

We carried it in an MLK march today. The girls were quite proud.

FYI: Kathy has other murals for sale on her site, including George Washington (for President's Day)