For four consecutive years the Center for Community Engagement & Service at American University has acquired a $1,000.00 MLK Day of Service Grant from the Corporation for National & Community Service. These funds have supported the Center’s staff in their mission to educate and engage the AU community with Washingtonians around the social and economic issues that impact them.

The 2012 MLK Day of Service event engaged 270 volunteers with 12 different community partners. Service areas were senior citizens, youth, education, immigrant, and public health. Here we address the impact that this event had on DC’s Public Health sector. There were three concentrations within the Public Health sector that will be discussed here: Food/Nutrition, HIV/AIDS, and Women’s Health.

Food/Nutrition: There are over 12,000 homeless people in DC and more than 2000 of them are homeless families. In 2011, the Washington Post published an article that stated that, 17.6 percent of DC’s population lives below the poverty level, roughly three percent higher than the national average. Last year we partnered with St. Luke’s Church for the MLK Day of Service to develop a dinner program for the homeless. This year the partnership has developed into a full Campus Kitchen Program, which engages over 40 volunteers monthly in direct service. For this year’s MLK kitchen project about 55 volunteers prepared and served approximately 70 hot meals to individuals. In addition to providing food to the homeless community another 80 volunteers worked together to create roughly 300 warm-weather kits that were donated to Gospel Rescue Ministries in Northeast DC. Volunteers dedicated 460 hours of community service between these two projects.

Women Health: In 2008, DC’s infant mortality rate was 10.9 deaths per every 1,000 live births, in contrast to the national rate which was 6.9. Yet, the infant mortality rate for black women in DC was 17.2 and 9.4 for Latino women. Last year we partnered with the Family Health & Birth Center and Planned Parenthood to raise student awareness of this issue. Collectively, 30 volunteers committed about 90 hours of direct service to the Women’s Health community. We continued our support to this sector in this year by partnering with the Women’s Collective (WC). This organization advocates for DC area HIV/AIDS positive women, specifically for Women of Color. About 10 volunteers worked with the WC Teen Team to develop an online public service announcement for DC youth community on the importance of safe sex. It was published on Youtube.com (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DXsej070lk) on February 9 and currently has just over 75 views.

HIV/AIDS: There are approximately 15,120 DC residents over 12 years-old living with HIV/AIDS. There has been a 22% increase in cases since 2006. To raise our students’ awareness of its impact on the community we partnered with a HIV/AIDS advocacy groups, Damien Ministries (DM). We have worked with them for the MLK event since 2010. Volunteers assigned to this site assisted DM staff sorting and packaging food and clothing donations for clients. This year 20 volunteers contributed 60 hours to this site.