In front of the King Birth Home with Ranger Marty Smith

Volunteers from the Greening Youth Foundation came up with the perfect way to celebrate Martin Luther King’s birthday: by working at Atlanta’s Martin Luther King National Historic Site, where thousands of visitors spent the day exploring and reflecting on the life of the iconic leader.

It was also a fitting day of volunteer work for the GYF crew for another reason: the MLK site, run by the National Park Service, is one of GYF’s most important partners in the foundation’s quest to introduce young people to careers in land management and environmental conservation. Indeed, in the coming months the Greening Youth Foundation will be sending numerous crews of young people to the King site to work in internships and to help “green” the dozens of historic structures on the site. GYF’s “Green the King” project hopes to improve the site’s energy and water efficiency, make appropriate use of its renewable energy sources, reduce the site’s waste streams, improve its indoor air quality, and improve building comfort and performance. The partnership of GYF and the MLK site has even received a transportation grant from the National Park Foundation that will allow GYF to bring its Eco-Force members from the GYF schools to the King site for an Earth Day celebration in April.

A young GYF volunteer hands out a map

But on the national holiday celebrating King’s birthday, the GYF volunteers—young and not so young—had the main objective of assisting the throngs of visitors as they made their way around the site, providing maps and directions and answering questions. To insure that the GYF volunteers were well-versed on the layout and history of the site, Ranger Marty Smith, one of the rangers assigned to the MLK site, gave the group an early morning tour before the visitors started to amass. The highlight of the tour was the visit to the birth home of Dr. King, the modest two-story, yellow-and-brown wooden frame house where Martin was born and spent his childhood. It is a thrilling experience to view the home preserved in the exact same condition as it was when young Martin ran its halls and sat at its grand dining room table with the formal place settings that the King family used every night—Martin Sr. believed in the family eating together as a group every night of the week. Martin was born at 12 noon on the king-sized bed in his parents’ bedroom, and the clock sitting on the mantle above the room’s fireplace has been permanently set to noon.

Listeners follow the King Day festivities from outside the church

Once the festivities began, the GYF volunteers passed out site maps to the overflow crowd outside that watched on a big jumbotron screen the ceremony that was taking place inside of the fabulous 11-year-old “horizon” sanctuary of Ebenezer Baptist Church. Dr. King’s sister, Christine King Farris, was the master of ceremonies and Dr. Cornel West gave a rousing, thought-provoking keynote address during which he suggested that Dr. King would be fighting hard for the nation’s poor if he were still alive today.

GYF volunteers wave during King Day March

The GYF volunteers capped off the warm, sunny day by participating in the tail-end of the King Day March, which started in downtown Atlanta and made its way all the way up Auburn Avenue to end at the King site, near the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church. For the younger volunteers, it was their first time joining an official “march” and their gleeful faces revealed their excitement at being part of the flowing sea of humanity that walked and sang its way up Sweet Auburn Avenue. After the march ended, the strains of the old spiritual, “Amen,” still drifted through the air.

“Everybody say Amen…”

Students listen to presentation.

Environmental groups connect with student volunteers in Atlanta

If ever you need an injection of optimism about the future of the environmental movement, a day spent with the young volunteers of Community Collaborations International would be the perfect elixir.

The passion and commitment of this next generation of environmental leaders was on full display in Atlanta recently when the Greening Youth Foundation brought together a line-up of local environmental groups to make a presentation to Community Collaborations International (CCI) college students working in Atlanta during their Christmas break to assist flood victims. On a frigid, snowy afternoon in the basement of an Atlanta church, the environmental groups told the young volunteers about the many environmental challenges facing Atlanta in coming years and encouraged them to channel their dedication and zeal to make a difference.

“Our whole mission is connecting young folks and students to the environment,” Angelou Ezeilo, Greening Youth Foundation Executive Director, said to the CCI group as she introduced presenters from the Atlanta Beltline, the Greening Youth Foundation, Sustainable Atlanta and S.E.e.E.D. (Students Endeavoring For Enlightened Environmental Decisions).

GYF Education Director Ruth Kitchen (in orange sweater) gets the students warmed up.

Community Collaborations International offers volunteers the opportunity to work on vital community service projects in the United States and abroad for short, concentrated time periods. The group’s motto is “placing volunteers where they are needed most.” CCI projects include hurricane relief in Texas, flood relief in Georgia, sea turtle rescue in Costa Rica, building sustainable, eco-friendly facilities in Panama, and helping villagers develop a sustainable economic base in Costa Rica by building micro-enterprise tourism businesses. The students pay hundreds of dollars to be part of the volunteer groups. The volunteers that listened to the Atlanta presentation were from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. While they are volunteering in Atlanta, the students are bunking together—several hundred at a time—in a converted church off Highland Avenue in the Old Fourth Ward.

Laura Cordero of the Atlanta Beltline told the students the history of the ambitious Beltline project, which was actually conceived by a student at Georgia Tech. In light of the recent Forbes magazine report ranking Atlanta as the most “toxic” city in the country and the fact that Atlanta has the lowest percentage of park space among the nation’s 25 biggest cities, Cordero stressed the importance of the Beltline, which is combining greenspace, trails, transit and new development along 22 miles of historic rail lines that encircle the city of Atlanta. Cordero told the young people that the 20-year Beltline project, which started five years ago, will improve the city’s health and its quality of life. The students were intrigued by the possibilities of the Beltline and asked Cordero about the many challenges the project still faces.

Laura Cordero provides details on the Atlanta Beltline.

James Ezeilo, Operations Director for Greening Youth Foundation, told the audience about the rare opportunity that GYF has created to offer college students paid internships at National Park Service sites. He gave details about a GYF internship project that’s about to start at three NPS sites in Colorado, using homeless teenagers from the Denver area. Several of the CCI volunteers said they have already done NPS internships. Ade Oguntoye, GYF’s Director of Strategic Partnerships and Community Outreach, provided the students with details of the intern selection process.

James King of S.E.e.E.D. , which was started by students at Morehouse College, talked about the group’s efforts to start an organization while on campus to switch the incandescent lightbulbs in poor neighborhoods. S.E.e.E.D. was formed to bring awareness to environmental justice and energy/water conservation issues. Imran Battla, a Program Associate for Sustainable Atlanta, an environmental consulting group, gave a brief history of Atlanta’s water crisis and talked about his organization’s efforts to lead Atlanta to a sensible solution to its water shortage.

“We wanted to leave you with the idea of self-entrepreneurship,” Battla said to the students. “We have the power in our own hands.”

Ezeilo said she will be organizing another environmental presentation to a new group of CCI student volunteers sometime in the early spring.