The day-of-event coordinator is responsible for keeping the event running smoothly overall. You'll coordinate the opening and closing ceremonies, incorporate MLK educational components into the day, design the Pledge Card and organize and distribute evaluations. This position obviously has a lot of responsbility on the day-of the event, and also requires a great deal of coordination and communication with other groups in the weeks leading up to MLK day. See the attached sample day-of-event agenda from ASU's 2006 event.

Opening Ceremony
This is the first introduction your participants will have to the day, so make it exciting & educational. You want people to leave the opening ceremony energized and inspired and ready to tackle their challenge. Brainstorming with your planning committee is a great way to get ideas and suggestions for the opening ceremony. Length of the ceremony will obviously depend on the campus, but at some, it runs around 1 hour, 15 minutes, with about half of that devoted to actual "ceremonial pieces" and the rest to challenge selection, explaining rules, etc.
Inviting guest speakers or performers is a great way to get people excited about serving in honor of Dr. King. Some ideas:

• creative artistic expression (music, art, dance, poetry) that honors Dr. King (gospel choirs, campus spoken word groups, etc)
  
• keynote speaker
  
• video of one of Dr. King's speeches

Challenge Selection (example process from Appalachian State)
1. In the front of the room, create a "challenge board" to hang the challenge packets on, thus
15 groups = 15 challenge packets, lettered A - O.
2. Each group sends a representative up to pick a number 1 - 15 to determine the order they will select a packet.
3. Each group, in their randomly chosen order, chooses a rep. to select a packet from the front of the room. (sometimes the teams like to shout out which
letter should be chosen, kind of like on 'The Price is Right').
4. Member of the planning commitee (oftentimes the site development coordinator, since they actually wrote the challenge descriptions) reads the Challenge
aloud.
5. To keep people pumped, try yelling out "(TEAM NAME), ARE YOU UP FOR THE CHALLENGE??" People really do respond. And if they don't, ask them
again and require some more enthusiasm. There's such an energy in the room at this point though, teams are excited even if they find out they're going to
be shoveling fertilizer for 6 hours!
6. The group takes their packet, the process is repeated til each group has their packet.

What's in a Challege Packet? (example from one campus)

• the actual Challenge, so they know exactly where to go and what to do (see attached examples of Challenges)
• instructions on what to do first (go to the agency, find donations, or stay put and someone will meet them?)
• directions to the agency & phone numbers
• official donation letters to use to give to businesses
• donation-tracker sheet
  

Rules for the Day (suggested reminders)
1. What time do groups need to be back by?
2. Remind site leaders of contact information included in challenge packets (phone numbers, etc).
3. Appalachian State gives each site leader a sheet with all the challenges listed, and reads through which site leader is stationed where before everyone heads out. That way, if Mike's group needs a rug cleaner, and they know Steve's group needs one too, they can communicate during the day about sharing it.
4. "IT'S ALL PART OF THE CHALLENGE." This has become somewhat of a mantra at ASU's MLK Challenge. The whole point of the day is to solve problems, so before people leave, ASU reminds their students to let the inspiration of Dr. King carry them through the day, and to know...that their goal is to complete their challenge no matter what. So, if your van breaks down on the way to the site...."IT'S ALL PART OF THE CHALLENGE." If you get done 2 hours early with your project (and thus, you want the group to spend their time doing something meaningful)..."IT'S ALL PART OF THE CHALLENGE." If no businesses will donate paint to your group...you get the idea. Remind your participants that this day will require hard work and problem-solving and persistence...but they CAN do it. Because, everything, after all, is all part of the challenge.

Closing Ceremony
At this point, groups have returned, they're probably exhausted and elated with what they've been able to accomplish in just one day. The point of the closing ceremony is to 1) feed them and 2) help them see that what they did on MLK Day has been multiplied several times over by all the other groups in the room, and in turn, 1000s of times over by groups doing MLK projects all across the country. You want people to leave inspired, having processed what they accomplished. And all this in probably just under 1.5 hours (people will be tired).

Some ideas for closing ceremonies:

• MLK trivia
  
• Reflection idea: Give each group 2 minutes to discuss where they went, what they did, and how they completed their challenge on stage. (Posters are helpful to write points down.) Be sure to keep track of time -- 2 minutes x 10 groups is pretty good, but get into 3 or 4 minutes per group and you're looking at quite a while).
  
• Announce pledge cards & any follow-up service projects in the upcoming weeks (or ASB trips or other service-related opportunities for students to connect with).
  
• If possible, having a picture-laden powerpoint of the day is a cool way for groups to really feel like they were a part of something big (and who doesn't love seeing their group doing something cool on a big screen?). At ASU, a "shell" of a powerpoint is designed in advance, and a staff member just loads photos taken from the day (which, logistically, might be tricky for just one person to do -- if several can help it makes it considerably easier) into the presentation, plays a song (also a good topic of discussion among the planning committee), and it's ready to go by 6:15 p.m.
  

For reflection ideas, and links to helpful websites for educational components, see MLK reflection ideas.