A day on, not off – The Reporter

By Richard Bammer

There were the sounds of a shovel scraping soil mixtures from the asphalt into newly built redwood planter boxes. There were the sights of young people, smiling and earnest, cleaning windows that may not have been cleaned in months, maybe a year. And there was the flurry of activity that comes with the group-painting of murals, accompanied by murmuring voices of encouragement as some half-dozen people brushed or slathered pigments onto a multipurpose-room wall, images of letters and words spelling out “The Leader in Me.”

But most of all, there was in the air a sense of unity, of working together for a common purpose: The improvement of Anna Kyle Elementary in Fairfield on Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a national day of service, the only federal holiday observed as such and known for the expression “a day on, not a day off.”

Drawing some 225 volunteers (14 years and older), their sleeves turned up and ready to work in teams large and small, the daylong action at the TK-5 Kidder Avenue school was the 10th annual MLK Jr. Workday sponsored by Rebuilding Together Solano County, Kaiser Permanente, Home Depot and Republic Services of Fairfield.

Source: A day on, not off – The Reporter

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