Today's post is written by Bethany Hamilton, JD, NACHC Community HealthCorps Program Officer and AmeriCorps Alums NAC Member. This is reposted from the AmeriCorps Alums blog published today on 1/30/13.
Today's post is written by Joseph Michael Peterson, a strategic communications and CSR manager in Washington, D.C. In his free time, he organizes groups of friends and neighbors for service projects in the surrounding community, as part of his own fledgling social organization.
I used to live in a town. Within two blocks of my house was a Big Brothers Big Sisters office, a neighborhood garden, a homeless shelter, a local food bank, a soup kitchen, the YMCA and a service-learning center sponsored by the local university. I never went.
Then last weekend I hosted a Sunday Supper and used it to launch a social club for meaningful activities and community service. But it didn't start there.
Two years ago I stumbled upon the Conference of Volunteering and Service (which, you may find to be an interesting story by itself that I blogged about here).
NCVS literally changed my life.
Friends,
The word "supper" means different things to different people, but for me it evokes memories of a big Southern fried chicken dinner around my grandmother's dining room table with family and friends and lots of stories, arguments and jokes.
Gathering around a common table has always been central to creating community and finding solutions. Martin Luther King, Jr. dreamed of "the table of brotherhood." And there was a reason that one of the most potent acts of the civil rights movement was the simple insistence on having a seat at the table in restaurants across the South.
