MLK Day of Service

Martin Luther King Jr. day is the only federal holiday observed as a national day of service! Every year on MLK Day, UF student volunteers work with other members of the community on a variety of service opportunities in the Gainesville area. The purpose of the event is to build awareness of diverse social issues and communities, while meeting new people and serving the community.

Organizations such as Days for Girls, Grace Marketplace, Grow Hub, and The Hunger Project all took in groups of volunteers for the day. We decided to work with Keeping Alachua County Beautiful, a Gainesville non-profit organization working to remove litter and beautify our community. We've worked with them for every one of our IEEE cleanups as well, as they provide us with routes, cleaning supplies, and safety gear!

Our day started off with a kickoff event in the UF Reitz Union, where we got to meet our team leaders and eat breakfast. From there we headed out to our cleanup location, which happened to be the same long route as our previous cleanup. This time, we had a group of 8 people to clean the route, all UF students with a variety of backgrounds. I had a great time talking with and getting to know our teammates. We played music as we walked and had a great time!

Most importantly, we were able to clean the entire route. The northernmost part of the route, which we hadn't reached in our previous cleanup, contained very large, deep drainage trenches filled with all sorts of litter, even items such as a whole vacuum! We spent the majority of our time there, and it ended up taking us over 3 hours to clean the entire route. It felt super satisfying to finally finish and throw out our heavy, massive bags of trash. MLK Day of service turned out to be an excellent experience, and we will definitely take part in it again next year.

Date: Monday, January 17th