From The President
I am excited to report that we are launching MLK 365, a new year-round initiative promoting sustainable civic engagement and volunteer opportunities. We will formally kick-off MLK 365 on January 19 as part of our 14th annual Greater Philadelphia Martin Luther King Day of Service. Using the King Day of Service as a springboard, we will work with our partners to encourage year-round volunteer opportunities. We will focus on community concerns such as literacy, homelessness, poverty, sub-standard housing, bridging the digital divide, the environment, energy and healthcare.
Please join us on January 19, 2009 as tens of thousands of volunteers throughout Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware serve in the 14th annual Greater Philadelphia King Day of Service. Since 1996, some 400,000 volunteers across the region have celebrated Dr. King's legacy by turning community concerns into volunteer service and citizen action on King Day and throughout the year. Each year, the annual Greater Philadelphia King Day of Service has been the largest King Day event in the nation.
What started as a Philadelphia project in 1996 has become a fast-growing, nationwide movement leading to greater inter-group understanding, breaking down barriers, ongoing partnerships, sustainable progress, and greater understanding about the legacy of Dr. King, particularly among young people.
We are expecting a tremendous turnout of tens of thousands of volunteers on January 19 in hundreds of projects across the tri-state area. In order to help support your organizing efforts for January 19 and beyond, we are pleased to provide you with our updated project development kit. We hope that it will provide useful background information, new ideas for organizing King Day of Service projects, partnership building ideas, and how to use King Day as a springboard for ongoing community involvement.
Please use our King Day of Service website to register your project(s) or to volunteer as an individual or group so that we can match you with a project. We also encourage you to expand your organization's project capacity so that we can match other volunteers with your project. This will help you get more accomplished, while bringing together diverse groups and promoting better understanding.
Please contact us at 215-665-2475 or mlkdayofservice@globalcitizen.us.com to learn more about our program. We thank you for your partnership and ongoing commitment to celebrate Dr. King's legacy through citizen action on King Day and every day! We are excited to support you in these efforts.
Todd Bernstein
President
Global Citizen