King and Obama inspire voluntarism

PROVO — The chocolate frosting around her mouth was tasty evidence that little Hannah Smith enjoyed the doughnut she ate Monday morning at Brigham Young University.

The way the 5-year-old girl jumped up and ran to grab another plain white pillowcase proved that she liked the service project that came after the doughnut even better.

Kneeling on her chair and using stencils and markers, Hannah enthusiastically drew hearts and stars on pillowcases for hospitalized children, one of about 30 service projects that drew hundreds of people to Community Outreach Day to celebrate the life and mission of Martin Luther King Jr.

Across the table from Hannah in the Garden Terrace, where a glass roof provided sun and warmth inside the Wilkinson Student Center, her 7-year-old friend, Eliza Smith, stenciled "Good Night!" in yellow marker. A few tables down, a Utah Valley University student wrote "Roar Dinosaur" around the dinosaurs he drew.

A few tables down, volunteers knitted hats for an orphanage. Upstairs, others glued together AIDS awareness booklets to be sent to Africa. Earlier, vans left to take groups to paint bathrooms in Provo's North Park, to give pedicures and manicures at assisted living homes and to sort donations at Deseret Industries.

Lon and Betty Olsen learned about the event through President-elect Barack Obama's Web site.

"We're here to support our president," Betty Olsen said, "and to honor Martin Luther King." She got in a van headed to a Habitat for Humanity project, where she'd like to help on a permanent basis. Her husband boarded a different van to tell stories at an assisted living center.

BYU professor Madison Sowell told volunteers during a devotional that he grew up in the South and remembered bathrooms and drinking fountains segregated by race. He reminded them of King's dream of a united United States and suggested learning to serve at a young age is a way to contribute.

"Dr. King was willing to work. Dr. King was willing to do, he was willing to serve to make that dream a reality, not only for himself but for his children and his children's children," Sowell said.

BYU and UVU students who organized the event wore T-shirts with one of King's slogans: "Everybody can be great because everybody can serve."

Cindy Smith was grateful to BYU and UVU for organizing the event, to which she brought little Hannah and her friend, Hannah's brothers and sisters and a Lithuanian exchange student.

"Like (Sowell) said, the earlier you start them serving, the better it is," she said. "Some places don't like kids to come and serve."