Throughout this entire week, Weber State University’s Community Involvement Center is hosting a variety of volunteer opportunities to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.
King said, “Everybody can be great . . . because anybody can serve. You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.”
The CIC is a connection for students to community-based learning through organizations such as Americorps and Civitas. They also present a range of community outreach events to WSU students.
“The student would find a greater sense of community, that we are not just this organization, this university, but rather a part of a much larger community with needs,” said Community Involvement Center Coordinator, Mike Moon about the chance for students to engage in service. “Students will realize that the only needs are not just abroad and in developing countries, that we have very severe needs in our own community and students can be a part of affective change, ”
Events to mark the occasion began last week. WSU hosted both a blood drive and a Freedom Munch and March to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
The CIC has several volunteering opportunities this week for students to attend. Students can go as near as campus or venture to other non-profit, community based places to give service.
On Jan. 18th, there will be a volunteer fair from 8 a.m. until 12 p.m. in the Shepherd Union atrium. Representatives from more than 30 agencies in the community are expected to attend.
Then Thursday, Jan. 19th, the CIC is working with the YMCA of Ogden to renovate a cafeteria into a meeting location. This project will start at 10 a.m. at 2504 F Avenue, Ogden, just south of West Ogden Park.
Then on Saturday, Jan. 21st in Ballroom A inside the Shepherd Union Building, there will be an assembly to make blankets for the St. Anne’s Homeless Shelter. The function is being produced by the CIC, Project Linus and Anything for a Friend.
Also on Saturday, Habitat for Humanity, an organization that builds homes for those impoverished, will need help painting one of the houses it built in Clearfield. The address is 350 North 75 West, and the painting will start at 9 a.m. and could last until 4 p.m.
To encourage volunteer work in communities, King said, “There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we now have the resources to get rid of it. The time has come for an all-out world war against poverty . . . The well off and the secure have too often become indifferent and oblivious to the poverty and deprivation in their midst. Ultimately, a great nation is a compassionate nation. No individual or nation can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.’”
Martin Luther King Jr. Day marks the nationwide effort to bring awareness to poverty, violence and racism, which were problems in society that King spent his life generating a nonviolent movement in opposition.
