Shenikiqua Bridges stood pulling potatoes out of black crates in a warehouse. She examined each potato as she pulled them from the crates. She tossed bad potatoes in the gray tub sitting in the middle of the warehouse and bagged the edible ones in plastic grocery bags.
The senior legal studies major was only one of two dozen students volunteering their day off to the Second Harvest Food Bank.
As part of the national King Day of Service, the Student Voluntary Services sent students to three different volunteer programs in Delaware County, including the Second Harvest Food Bank, Habitat for Humanity and the Boys and Girls Club.
“Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service is a national day of service; it’s supposed to be a day where you go out and give back,” said Kim Hoffman, a graduate assistant of SVS.
SVS participates in the national day of service every year.
Second Harvest Food Bank
This wasn’t Bridges’ first time sorting through potatoes at Second Harvest Food Bank.
“I wanted to do something for Martin Luther King Jr. Day instead of just being lazy and sitting at home,” Bridges said. She was joined by others members of her service fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega.
The Second Harvest Food Bank supplies fresh produce to 110 food pantries and soup kitchens in eight different counties.
“Last year we had 23,000 hours of volunteerism; without them, we would not be able to run the food bank,” said Joe Fox, recruitment and volunteer director. “The amount of volunteers we get from Ball State every year is wonderful, absolutely wonderful.”
Tori Raderstorf, a sophomore hospitality and food management major, also volunteered her morning to sorting through potatoes with some friends from her sorority, Epsilon Sigma Alpha.
“It might seem like a simple, mundane task, separating these potatoes, but we really are contributing to something much bigger,” Raderstorf said. “I’d rather be spending my morning here than sleeping in.”
Habitat for Humanity
Caroline Lawson, a sophomore architecture major, and her friends took turns swinging a sledgehammer into the pink plaster walls of a Habitat for Humanity home in downtown Muncie. The ground was layered with a hash of wood and paint chips.
“We’re out here because we want to do community service,” she said. “We’re architecture majors, and we also want to represent our sorority [Alpha Gamma Delta].”
Habitat for Humanity is a philanthropic organization that provides qualifying families the opportunity to own a home they can afford with at a zero interest rate. The money paid by the recipients of the home, known as partner families, goes to start new projects.
The organization doesn’t exclusively build new homes, it re-builds and renovates low value or otherwise uninhabitable properties. The project for the Day of Service was one such renovation.
The volunteers were divided into two groups. The first group broke down the old walls so that it could be replaced by modern drywall. The second dug scrap metal, the remnants of a heating system, from the basement.
“This is a celebration of what Martin Luther King did,” said Aaron Daeger, a computer technology major, after hefting a length of ductwork up the stairs. “Habitat is a great organization to work with.”
The home the volunteers worked on was for Lilita Jackson. In accordance with Habitat for Humanity policy, every adult in a partner family must complete 250 volunteer hours for the charity called “sweat hours.”
“I cook lunch, help put up siding, put up a shed and worked in the office,” said Jackson, a 22-year-old mother. “I’m really looking forward to not having to rent anywhere and having a stable place to live with my kids for years.”
Boys and Girls Club
At the Delaware County Boys and Girls Club, a lone boy pushed the “seven” ball across the pool table with a cue longer than he was tall. Yolanda Bonner, program director at the Boys and Girls Club, put her hand on his shoulder, urging him back into the cafeteria.
“Go on, your brother is in there,” she said.
The Delaware County Boys and Girls Club is a second home for children in preschool through high school. The South Madison Street office boasts amenities such as a computer lab, full gymnasium, TVs and a functioning kitchen.
The facility was decorated in preparation for SVS’s program on Martin Luther King Jr. and his values. One room features a mock-up of King’s Birmingham jail cell, complete with a cardboard cutout of King, a posted sign with visited hours and a letter King wrote from prison on his desk.
Volunteers split the students into groups and moved them through stations every 15 minutes. Children created “freedom bells” out of cups and pipe cleaner, illustrated what they perceived peace to look like and explored how to promote peace in both their communities and the world.
“We have six different ideas that we want to present: freedom, peace, education, community service, equality and dreams,” said senior biology major Orlando Acevedo. “We really want to get the kids thinking about those ideas early on.”
The club’s extensive Martin Luther King Jr. Day festivities were spearheaded by Bonner, who has been program director for less than two years.
She said she was inspired by a quote by King: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
“The importance of volunteering is so that your voice can be heard,” Bonner said. “So these kids can live out the dream. That is so important… because these kids do matter, they are the future.”
