Moulton, ISU Partner on “Day of Action” in Honor of MLK Day
Moulton students participate in a “Day of Action” in honor of MLK Day, volunteering their time to help Meals from the Heartland.
Yesterday Iowa State University President Steven Leath was in Washington for President Obama’s summit on increased educational opportunities for minorities and disadvantaged youth. Leath used the occasion to declare the school’s intention to raise $150 million over the next five years to fund scholarships for that purpose. It’s no coincidence that ISU Vice President for Public Affairs Thomas Hill told an auditorium full of youngsters at Moulton Learning Center the very next day that he will have “a boatload of money” for them when the time comes if they buckle down in school starting right away and come applying at Iowa State when they graduate from high school.
Dr. Hill’s pledge of generosity was the keynote of the assembly that kicked off Moulton’s MLK Celebration Day this morning.
“Every last one of you in this auditorium,” Hill said loudly and repeatedly after everyone stood together for the Pledge of Allegiance, “has what it takes to go to college.”
Sure it was cold this morning but the tone for the day was set by one kid skipping through the snow into school silhouetted by a sundog. Nothing personifies hope better than a child skipping their way through January.
Following Hill’s promissory speech the whole school, pre-k through 8th grade, watched a short training video provided by Meals From the Heartland before taking a shift, grade by grade, in the gym where MFTH had set up one of their patented assembly lines for packaging lifesaving pouches of nourishment to be shipped, in this case, to starving people in South Africa and the Philippines. MFTH spokesman Joel O’Dell told his troops for the day that together they would assemble some 13,000 meals toward MFTH’s 2014 overall goal of 10 million.
Besides Hill’s rousing remarks he brought along a contingent of ISU staff members to pitch in and help the kids bag the chow. As he reminded the Moulton students, none of whom were yet born when Dr. King’s birthday was observed as a national day of service by all 50 states for the first time in 2000, Dr. King’s legacy remains community service and activism in the face of inequality and injustice.
Moulton Principal Cheri Dixon dismissed her charges to do their civic duty and reminded them that there would be another assembly on the day’s back end – after some 13,000 unseen strangers in faraway corners of the world had been served.
Moulton students wear black polo shirts with the school Tiger emblazoned on the chest but today the look was topped off with hairnets. There was also more than a splash of Cyclone cardinal and gold in the building. Without a program you couldn’t tell the Moulton staff from the ISU. And in years to come the lines between students of the two schools will also blur.
That’s a promise.
