Find Out How to Give Back on MLK Day

Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Everybody can be great … because anybody can serve.”

If you’re anybody in Moorestown, you have a few ways to serve over the long weekend, stretching into the late civil rights leader’s birthday holiday on Monday.

Here’s how you can give back:

For the fourth year in a row, the Moorestown Ministerium will sponsor a service project at Trinity Episcopal Church, in which children put together “birthday boxes” for Catholic Charities, a nonprofit social services organization. The boxes contain festive items like cake mix, frosting, candles, plates, napkins and small gifts—provided by the children—and are distributed by Catholic Charities to its less fortunate clients for birthday celebrations (be it theirs or a loved one’s).

The activity is open to the whole community, not just church members. Children under 10 should be accompanied by an adult. Those who want to participate can stop by Trinity between 9-11 a.m. Monday.

Also on Monday, Moorestown Friends School (MFS) students, faculty and parents will perform community service work in observance of the holiday.

Volunteers of all ages will gather at 10 a.m. at the school and assemble in the Moorestown Friends Meeting House for a Quaker Meeting for Worship in honor of Dr. King. Following the Meeting for Worship, keynote speaker and MFS Upper School Director Justin Brandon will provide keynote remarks that will mix his personal experiences and reflections with thoughts about the legacy of Dr. King.

Following his remarks the students will begin service activities, including creating birthday party bags for the Devereux Foundation Group Homes, preparing health kits to be delivered to New Visions and Samaritan Hospice, creating scarves for a local women’s’ shelter, creating Project Linus quilts for hospitalized children, and sewing stuffed animals for Samaritan Hospice.

Faculty will offer cooperation games for young students and parents and third grade teacher Ted Quinn will lead activities related to his Peace Corps experience.

This is the 13th year MFS has scheduled community service activities as part of the King Day observance.

If you don’t mind getting your hands dirty, a group of Moorestonians who have visited Atlantic City twice in the last couple months to clean out flooded and damaged homes are trying to organize a third trip this weekend.

Helen Davies-Miramontes, one of the organizers, said AmeriCorps, which helped coordinate the previous trips, reached out to her seeking assistance for either Saturday or Sunday.

Anyone interested in volunteering should RSVP ASAP to h.miramontes@verizon.net or call 609-304-9989 and leave a message.

Know of any other service opportunities we missed? Let us know in the comments below.

To learn a few interesting facts about Martin Luther King Jr. Day—like what part Stevie Wonder played in its creation and the controversy over the DC memorial to the civil rights pioneer—click here.