PVS Students Attend Bridges’ 25th MLK Day of Service

This month, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, local nonprofit Bridges USA hosted a virtual youth summit to engage youth on the topic of civic engagement and community service. The three hour event was a collaboration between Bridges and another local nonprofit, City Year. The event was geared towards students in middle and high school and consisted of two separate workshops. The first workshop was dedicated to dissecting social issues, like racism and the school to prison pipeline. Students drew ‘weed diagrams’ and drew all the major parts of the plant, labeling each part with a different angle of the issues (i.e. labeling the root with the root cause of the issue, the stem as the institutions that hold up the issue).

The second workshop focused on educating the youth participants on how to create actionable direct change. Students were taught how to write letters to their representatives, draft petitions, and how to facilitate informative sessions of their own. The event ended with a collective debrief and remembrance for Martin Luther King, Jr. PVS student Zaheen Chowdhury attended the event, saying, “I believe that workshops like these are not only important to educate youth on these complex issues in our society, but allow us to create actual, systemic change in our communities.”