On Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, nearly 180 students gathered in the Student Union Ballroom at 8:45 a.m. ready to take on a day of service in the name of a legendary civil rights leader.
During the time where the remainder of their peers were still laying in bed, the largest group of participants the Office of Leadership and Service Learning had ever seen checked in and listened to the Jonathan Page, Director of Citizen Leadership and Social Justice Education, give a commencement speech.
“Today I ask that we commit ourselves to serving each other as well as our own community,” said Page. “I do this because of a basic need and desire to give something back, to perform an exchange, my time and talent for something much greater. Satisfaction.”
Following his motivational words for the day, Page listed the assignments for the day. Students were split into groups heading to one of seven areas for the day: Cleaning Virginia’s Waterways, Farmville Area Community Emergency Services (F.A.C.E.S.), Zephyr Rescue Horse Stables, Habitat for Humanity, Keysville Nursing Home, Friends of The High Bridge Trail and New Life Church.
Participants from all kinds of different walks of life intermingled while helping the community; despite belonging to different social groups on campus, students joined in the name of giving back.
Bringing their small, self-packed lunches with them, the groups split into their specified areas. For nearly four hours, participants worked under the guidance of their advisors.
Activities ranged from picking up litter along the river, to stocking shelves in the food bank or to grooming and giving rescue horses love. Each site offered a different opportunity for self-growth and experiencing an aspect of life not typical to an ordinary day on campus.
Clean Virginia’s Waterways is an organization dedicated to the care of the state’s rivers, bays and beaches. Volunteers dedicated themselves to picking up trash, thereby assisting in keeping the Farmville areas water unpolluted.
F.A.C.E.S. is a nonprofit food pantry that delivers necessary goods to over 500 qualified households in Farmville. Students placed here assisted in taking inventory and sorting the various food items that are donated to F.A.C.E.S., as well as preforming other needed tasks.
New Life Church is multi-site church that offers numerous services such as youth centers and different types of ministries. Zephyr Rescue Horse Stables, a new location for this year’s challenge added last minute to the large amount of volunteers, takes in horses in need of its care; it is not nonprofit, but nurses unhealthy horses to a stable status and sells riding lessons, as well as offers them up for adoption. Students were each assigned individual horses to groom in their time at the stables.
The Friends of the High Bridge Trail works to preserve the state park surrounding Farmville and support the resources the park provides.
Habitat for Humanity uses volunteers to build and furnish homes for those without one. Participants assisted in creating houses and taking inventory of furniture.
Keysville Nursing Home, also a late site addition, takes in elderly residents and also offers rehabilitation services. Volunteers spent time with the residents and provided a welcomed sense of company.
Following the work aspect of the itinerary, the students converged at the Moton Museum just off campus for the final stage of the challenge—reflection. Volunteer group leaders split students out of their area into circles for discussion.
Leaders guided the talk with larger, personal questions: What does service mean to you? How do you feel you have grown through the experience? What have you learned about working as a team? How can you incorporate service in your life moving forward?
Answers came in many forms, some people more active in conversation than others. All positive energy and thoughts were mirrored by the final speech given by Longwood senior Cainan Townsend, grandson of a plaintiff in the Brown vs. Board of Education case, to wrap up the day.
As a person who considered service a major factor in his own life, Townsend reinforced the idea that the service challenge was only “day one” and to use the day as a starting point. Ending his speech by reading a quote by Martin Luther King Jr. from his cell phone, Townsend delivered the day’s theme.
“If you want to be important-wonderful. If you want to be recognized-wonderful. If you want to be great-wonderful. But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant. That’s a new definition of greatness,” read Townsend.
“You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve. You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve. You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics in physics to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love. And you can be that servant.”
