HOWARD UNIVERSITY’S ‘ALTERNATIVE SPRING BREAK’ STUDENTS TO PARTICIPATE IN MODEL NEIGHBORHOOD CLEAN UP!
FETED AT ECC COFFEE HOUSE!
On Thursday, March 19th, the Alternative Spring Break (ASB) project students from Howard University will participate in Mayor Ras Baraka’s Model Neighborhood Initiative clean up on Seymour Avenue from 5:30-6:30pm.
They will be joined by other neighborhood volunteers and will focus on “the Model Street,” Seymour Avenue between Avon and Hawthorne Avenues.
Later that evening, The Africana Institute at Essex County College will host its first Coffee House Open Mic. It will spotlight the Howard ASB participants in appreciation for their volunteer service.
That will take place at Siegler Hall at Essex County College, University Ave and Market Street, Newark from 6:30-9:30pm.
The students, 50 of them, including some from Newark, are already doing other volunteer projects at various sites throughout the city and will conclude, weather permitting, with a community engagement walk, another civic participation initiative by Mayor Baraka, at week’s end.
Alternative Spring Break was launched in 1994 to provide Howard University students with a meaningful, constructive “alternative” to the indulgence-centered spring break activities that have dominated the commercial media in recent years. The aftermath of the Katrina disaster in New Orleans inspired the meaningful growth of the project, which has since appeared in several cities including New Orleans, Memphis, Detroit, Washington, DC, St. Louis, Chicago and Baltimore. It has also served abroad in Haiti.
It has been spotlighted on BET, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, The Chicago Tribune, The Detroit Free Press and The Hilltop. The 2006 New Orleans participants, some 250 volunteers, were recognized on ABC’s World News Tonight with the highly coveted ‘People of the Week’ Award. Last year, on the strength and merits of the project, Howard University was named to President Obama’s Higher Education Community Service Honor Roll, the highest distinction that a higher education institution can receive for community service.
The project coming to Newark dovetails with a surging community volunteerism spirit that has grown out of the city’s recent AntiViolence Movement efforts.
Mayor Ras Baraka and his late father, the pioneering revolutionary artist Amiri Baraka, are both Howard University alumni.
Mayor Baraka’s Model Neighborhood Initiative was formally launched in November as an organic strategy to transform several key troubled neighborhoods in the city.
For more information, please contact Ms. Eure at 973 885 8896…
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