Stockton Celebrates 20 Years of Service to the Community

For 20 years, Stockton students, faculty and staff have come together and spent Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day honoring the civil rights and social justice icon by committing to various projects that serve the communities in which they live.

Around 750 volunteers on the Galloway, Atlantic City, Hammonton and Woodbine locations had the opportunity to explore over 30 projects on Jan. 15, 2024, that ranged from smaller-scale craft-based creations – such as making positive affirmation buttons and decorating pencil cases for local schoolchildren – to deeper interactions with community members like Stories of Atlantic City’s storytelling stations.

Inspired by Zakat, an Islamic principle encouraging charity, the Muslim Student Association (MSA) hosted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich-making party for their day of service project. Around 30 volunteers made over 100 bags of sandwiches, which will benefit the Atlantic City Rescue Mission.

For Merydawilda Colón, director of Stockton Center for Community Engagement and Service-Learning (SCCESL), seeing so many volunteers after all the work the planning committee did organizing the projects made her feel “replenished.”

“I'm thrilled to be here celebrating our 20th Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Day of Service, and I thank you all for choosing to come here today,” Colón said in her opening remarks. “You could have been doing other things, and yet, you choose to come in, serve and celebrate his legacy with us.” 

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Community Day Volunteers Give Back to Atlantic City

As Ellis Bonds reached down to pick up a discarded glass bottle from the Texas Avenue Playground, he beamed with pride.

Stockton’s then-interim director of Residential Education joined a handful of students and staff to pick up trash at his childhood park on  April 27, 2024, as part of the Third Annual Community Day Clean Up and Party in the Park in Atlantic City.

“I was born and raised here,” Bonds said, adding that he went to the Texas Avenue school just down the street. “This is my hometown, and I think this is a great opportunity for Stockton to advance what we are doing in Atlantic City through efforts like serving the community.”

And that presence was strong as hundreds of volunteers signed up to clean up 10 different locations in all six wards of the city from the beach in front of Resorts Atlantic City to the Chelsea neighborhood surrounding Stockton’s Atlantic City campus.

“It’s really about Stockton partnering with the community to beautify our city,” said Brian K. Jackson, vice president for Community Engagement. “And I say, ‘our’ city because we all have a stake in Atlantic City.” 

Sophomore Tony Guardado-Castro joined Bonds in helping clean up the playground. He was one of several Educational Opportunity Fund (EOF) students to volunteer. The EOF is a state program that ensures meaningful access to higher education for those who come from backgrounds of economic and educational disadvantage.

“At first, it was a lot waking up at 8:30 a.m.,” he said with a laugh. “But now, being able to see everyone here and having fun, it’s made it all better.” 

Building a relationship with the students and the city is something that Ana Patricia DeNise, the then-interim director of Stockton’s EOF program, thinks is essential. 

“I feel like we all have a strong pride in our community, and giving back to our community is something that EOF holds very dear to us,” she said. “Our EOF program has a strong focus on service, going out in the community to serve the youth of Atlantic City and help prepare them for the college experience.”

 

 

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Event Highlights Importance of Service for New Students

Around 80 students, staff and faculty traded half their weekend for a full day of combatting food insecurity at the annual New Student Day of Service on Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023.

Robert Barney, associate professor of Social Work, gave the keynote address, which focused on his research on food insecurity and how service efforts are created to help alleviate some of the problems that people are experiencing.

“It feels like my focus as a researcher parallels what Merydawilda (Colón) and Jeff (Wakemen) have been organizing,” Barney said, referencing the day’s organizers. “I’m going to be presenting on the topic of food insecurity as it relates to COVID-19, specifically what was going on in the first few months of the pandemic and comparing food insecurity in South Africa with South Jersey.”

He hoped that students would continue to learn more about:

• Prioritizing hunger and food insecurity in terms of student efforts and addressing needs by giving back to both the local and broader global community;
• Recognizing that food insecurity is contextual, so we can’t use a one-size-fits-all approach to fix the systemic problem;
• Recognizing some of the complexities involved in service and how critical thought and ongoing engagement are needed in order to address those problems.

Volunteers then began their project: packaging food with Rise Against Hunger. Stone Powell-McDavitt, partnership manager for Rise Against Hunger, shared that the organization has worked with Stockton in previous days of service. They’re now looking forward to continuing to collaborate and work with Stockton students.

The students formed groups and joined Powell-McDavitt on the assembly line. The first group funneled rice, soy and vitamins into packages, which were then taken to the second group for weighing and sealing. The last group organized the packages, added important nutrition information stickers, and loaded them into boxes.

By the time students completed the project, Rise Against Hunger reached their goal of packaging 17,000 meals for shipping to underserved communities globally.

The volunteers also learned more about Stockton’s Food Assistance Program from Monica Viani of the Dean of Students office and the Westminster Christian Worship Center Food Pantry in Atlantic City from Thelma Witherspoon, senior pastor.