City Year spends holiday working at MLK Elementary

— The City Year program of Little Rock and North Little Rock spent the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday working at a Little Rock elementary school that bears the name of the Civil Rights activist.

Matt Denis, a City Year core member, said the educational non-profit organization likes to think of the holiday as a "day on," instead of a day off. City Year and volunteers spent the day at the Martin Luther King Magnet Elementary School painting, picking up trash and performing other beautification services around the school campus.

"Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is historically a national day of service, and we like to give people an avenue to help," Denis said. "We find that a lot of people want to help but they don't exactly know how, so we give them some organized event for them to participate in the national day of service."

Denis said the organization was expecting around 90 to 100 volunteers, but around 200 showed up to help out Monday morning.

"It was an awesome turnout by everybody in Little Rock and that was really nice to see," Denis said. "We were actually trying to find jobs for them, because there were so many people."

The organization's website says its mission statement is to "build democracy through citizen service, civic leadership and social entrepreneurship."

City Year's Day of Service was supported by the Clinton Foundation.

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