Penn State Behrend partnered with Serverie to host its first rotating MLK Day of Service with the help of student volunteers from western Pennsylvania campuses.

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Behrend’s campus welcomed roughly 50 students from five campuses to honor and celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The group of students branched out to several different locations around Erie to volunteer for organizations that serve those in need, including the Erie Soldiers and Sailors Home, Erie Children’s Museum and the Booker T. Washington Center, to name a few.

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The Erie Soldiers and Sailors Home, originally built in 1886 to house Civil War Veterans, hosted service work events where volunteers made gift bags for residents and played interactive games like Bingo.

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Kyle Slavic, junior business major of Penn State Fayette has volunteered around his community in the past. While attending Fayette, Slavic continued his volunteer work with joining THON freshman year and participating in the MLK Service Day each year.

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Last year, Fayette hosted MLK Service Day where Slavic volunteered at an animal shelter, the food bank, a domestic violence center and a nursing home.

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“You wouldn’t think that a nursing home needs a lot of work, but actually going in and doing all the work that they needed help with makes you realize that they could actually use volunteers a lot more than just for one day a year,” Slavic said.

Jeanie Davies, a senior biology major at Behrend, also began volunteer work at a young age when she began volunteering in her neighborhood in The Gambia.

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“I was brought up in a neighborhood where I knew there were people who needed help,” Davies said. “I was fortunate to have some basic necessities and I felt the need to give back to them because they didn’t have as much as I do.”

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Since Davies has been enrolled at Behrend, she has participated in MLK Service Day and volunteered for local hospitals during the summer. With almost 100 hours of volunteer work under her belt, Davies has continued with reaching out to the Erie community and organizations, including volunteering for Erie’s military-style march, Ruck the Bay last October. The event encouraged participants to fill a rucksack or backpack with items to donate to EUMA’s Liberty House, Erie’s only transitional shelter for homeless Veterans.

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The Erie Children’s Museum dedicated its service to entertaining and educating children. Volunteers split into groups and interacted with children through hands-on activities and also helped restock/clean the Wegman’s Kids Market, where empty produce boxes were donated from Wegmans.

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At the Booker T. Washington Center, volunteers helped clean, organize and coat the building’s wall and doors with a fresh coat of paint.

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Assistant Director of Student Affairs and Student Life Coordinator of Penn State New Kensington, Michelle Marcks, was joined by four student volunteers of New Kensington campus to help participate at the Booker T. Washington Center.

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“I enjoy leading students into volunteering and I love to see the impact it has in making a better community,” Marcks said. “Even if it’s a first-time volunteer, it’s nice to see them come back because they had such a great experience in doing something to help someone else.”

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The Manager of Student Affairs at Fayette, Chad Long, led the volunteer work at the Sisters of St. Joseph Neighborhood Network where economically challenged residents in Erie are given access to bikes through an Earn-A-Bike Program.

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Working for Penn State Fayette the past 16 years, Long’s favorite event to participate in has always been MLK Service Day.

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“You get to network with other Penn State students from other campuses,” Long said.“To be able to have all of the western campuses together in one day is awesome.”

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With Fayette County being one of the poorest counties in the state per capita, Long encourages students to engage in philanthropies and community service projects.

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“One of the things we talked about today during cleaning up the bikes is not only are we making an huge impact on residents financially, but also physically,” Long said. “They’re using that bike to transport somewhere, but by using a bike, they’re also physically being active which is also improving their health.”

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Long is looking forward to the positive impact the Penn State community continues to make on each campuses’ surrounding community, whether that be economical changes or cultural changes.

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“If you look at the impact you're making on the community, especially here at Fayette, and I think it goes for any Penn State campus, the extension offices in every single county in the state and the campuses in every single corner have an impact on the state that is just unbelievable.”

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Penn State Behrend’s office of civic engagement continues to put forth their efforts to a life-long attitude of service along with expanding its impact to surrounding Penn State communities in support of a memorable legacy where, “...anybody can serve.”