Reflecting on Dr. King's life and dream of a beloved community is an essential part of the MLK Challenge model. The goal is that students will better understand Dr. King's dream of equality and true social justice. Providing students with opportunities to reflect on Dr. King and service throughout the day, as well as during the closing ceremony, will allow them to connect their service to Dr. King's life of action.
Quotes serve as an easy reflection starting-point. Some campuses include a sheet of quotes in the challenge packet and encourage site leaders to discuss them over lunch with their group. MLK quotes --
- Everybody can be great, because everybody can serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.
- I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.
- Life's most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others?
- Let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge, to make America what it ought to be.
- Although social change cannot come overnight, we must always work as though it were a possibility in the morning.
- An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
- All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
- Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
- Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.
- Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
- We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
- I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
- The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
- Although social change cannot happen overnight, we must always work as though it were a possibility in the morning.
- These students are not struggling for themselves alone. They are seeking to save the soul of America. They are taking our whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the formulation of the Constitution & the Declaration of Independence. In sitting down at the lunch counters, they are in reality standing up for the best in the American dream. One day historians will record this student movement as one of the epics of our heritage.
The Greater Philadelphia Day of Service (www.mlkdayofservice.org) also has some great ideas for reflections -- - Discuss the community need/concern that your project addressed/met. Discuss how the group used Dr. King's principles (unity, respect, service, peace, justice, etc) to successfully complete the project.
- Ask participants to discuss these questions:
1. Why are you serving today?
2. What is the connection between Dr. King's legacy and honoring him by serving others?
3. If Dr. King were alive today, what issues do you think would concern him? How would he react?
4. What are some ways you can continue to honor Dr. King throughout the year?
Celebration Ideas
- Show a PowerPoint of photos taken throughout the day of student serving
- Invite local public officials & campus "celebrities" (i.e. chancellor/president, dean of studens) to volunteer with you (or be a part of opening or closing ceremony)
- Solicit food & prize donations from local businesses (MLK-themed prized are great for MLK trivia!)
- Participate in the 2010 Technology Contest & showcase your campus MLK Day of Service event
- Engage your event alumni (both student planning committee members & volunteers)
- Email department heads to let them know their faculty/staff volunteered on the MLK Day of Service
- When possible, t-shirts, mugs, water bottles make great give-aways & are great advertisement for next year
For more info....Even more reflection & celebration resources....