South Philly Review

After pouring blue and yellow paint into aluminum trays, seven Youth Build Charter School students armed with rollers and brushes began freshening up doors and classrooms Monday morning at Dixon Learning Academy, 2201 Moore St., as part of the 15th Annual Greater Philadelphia Martin Luther King Day of Service.

For this group of five girls and two boys, painting was a piece of cake having done it many times before and they have performed far more difficult tasks, like dry-walling, since their curriculum at the Broad-and-Girard-streets institution requires 675 hours of community service a year.

“This is actually a small thing for us,” 20-year-old Andrea Dingle from Seventh Street and Snyder Avenue said as her 18-year-old brother Hassan painted a nearby wall.

Cartier Simmons, 19, from the same area as the Dingles, along with Brittany Fowler, 19, from the Lehigh section; Imin Jones, 18, from the Northeast; Shanaya Bell, 19, from the Northeast; and Janeia Chriswell, 18, from North Philly, rounded out the volunteers who spruced up the Point Breeze based day care and after-school program complex.

The group is part of more than 200 Youth Build students ages 18 to 21 who are former dropouts that are now putting their lives back together and getting their high school diplomas. Several instructors, including Nina Ball, were on hand at Dixon to lend a painting hand.

“This is a very motivated group. Doing community service builds character and self-esteem and gives back to the community. [Youth Build] believe in community service,” Ball said.

Dixon Learning Academy, which is under the Diversified Community Services umbrella, welcomed the new look. About 128 kids attend the age 6-weeks-through-sixth-grade day care and nearly 60 partake in after-school programs. Twenty-six full- and part-time staffers are employed by the center.

“I think it’s great,” Dixon Program Director Delores Mills said as she watched the Youth Build students at work. “We are in the process of re-accreditation and a fresh coat of paint makes everything look nice. We believe it’s a nice looking center and we take pride in that.”

For Bell and Andrea Dingle, doing work at a facility attended by children and youths was especially meaningful.

“I have a daughter and this is a day care, so I would want somebody to do something nice for my daughter’s day care. We need to be a good role model to our children. We need to motivate them to help bring about change. The more we come together as a community, it will bring us together and stop all the killing,” Bell said.

Added Andrea Dingle, “I feel good because I feel like I’m giving back to my neighborhood,” adding her 5-year-old cousin Taja Wilkinson attends the day care whose walls and doors Dingle and the others painted.

Jones’ philosophy about performing service on the late Dr. King’s day is simple: “I think we’re making a difference. Each one, teach one,” he said.

More than 65,000 volunteers and hundreds of projects were planned around the city Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Day.

“What started 15 years ago as a project has become a growing nationwide movement of celebrating Dr. King’s legacy by uniting people of all backgrounds and ages and turning pressing community concerns into ongoing citizen action,” Todd Bernstein, president of Global Citizen and director and founder of the Greater Philadelphia King Day of Service, said in a press release.

In 1994, then-President Bill Clinton signed a law making Jan. 18 a national holiday. About a dozen projects took place in South Philly. Other initiatives included African-American and Asian students at South Philadelphia High participating in a series of workshops to promote racial harmony and healing in the aftermath of recent violence at the school; the Cambodian Association of Greater Philadelphia engaging in a community cleanup effort in the neighborhood where it’s located, Seventh and Porter streets; and Sunrise of Philadelphia Inc. cleaning up of teachers’ desks, handrails and glass at Bok Technical School’s, 1901 S. Ninth St.

Over at the JCCs Stiffel Senior Center, 604 Porter, volunteers cleaned two food pantries, washed windowsills on the second floor, cleaned keyboards and monitors in the computer lab, spruced up the center’s thrift store and served lunch to members. Eight of the volunteers were from Congregation Rodeph Shalom, 615 N. Broad St., while one was Stiffel member Rachel Garber, 66, from Sixth and Ritner streets.

“Volunteerism is a very important part of Judaism. We are commanded and expected to help and we’re supposed to be grateful for the opportunity to perform a mitzvah,” Garber said.

Some of the Stiffel volunteers were multigenerational families, like 9-year-old Addison Schwarz, his brother Nathaniel, 14, and their mother, Nora.