We focused this special holiday on our service learning initiative with local Middle School students. We bused two-hundred students to Normandin Middle School.
Forty high school and college student leaders and select faculty, facilitated a three hour “Teach-in” revolving around the history of the voting rights movement, the activism and specifically, how students made a difference then and can again. The program also focused on the importance of voting and participating citizenship. (Day after local press here).
Erik Andrade, founder of La Soul Renaissance initially fostered the idea to organize a teach-in and children’s march and for the past several years has spearheaded our combined efforts. We are grateful and indebted to Erik for his outstanding leadership, performance art and programming.
Lyn Dillies, world famous Illusionist and founder of the non-profit Your Vote Is Magic amazed and educated students not only in the history of voting rights, but more importantly on why voting matters.
After a tasty Dominos lunch, (provided by our friends at Dominos on Ashley Blvd) we concluded the program. A snow storm prohibited the students “marching” the mile to the GiftsToGive Factory to process donations.
We closed with conversations, reflection and commitments to on-gong service projects through UMass-Dartmouth’s, SouthCoastServes with local non-profits during the year.
We want to thank and acknowledge a group of amazing students at the Normandin Middle School for taking a lead in this year’s event and to Teacher Extraordinaire, Justine Santos and Principal Stephen Farrell for their extraordinary commitment to their students and their educational and community leadership!
We also want to thank Bristol County Savings Bank for underwriting this and several other annual student events. We are grateful to them for their on-going support, not only financially, but also for all the employees that volunteer!
The first annual SouthCoast Children’s March, 2014