Massachusetts Promise Fellowship | Winter Newsletter 2023
MPF Winter Newsletter
MLK Day of Service at Mario Umana Academy
MLK Day is a National Day of Service that celebrates the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King believed that "our goal is to create a beloved community" and that "this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives."

MLK day was first designated as a national day of service in 1994 when Congress passed the King Holiday and Service Act. It is the only federal holiday observed as a day of service - as a "day on, not a day off" - to encourage all Americans to volunteer to improve their communities.

Every year, MPF chooses a service project to address a need in our community. This year, we served at one of our host organizations, Mario Umana Academy to refresh the paint on their rainbow steps and benches. The Mario Umana Academy is a dual language school located in East Boston where they value, build and showcase their knowledge of multiple languages and cultures.
Host Site MLK Day Events
La Vida Scholars
MPF Fellow Kat Anderson serves at La Vida Scholars where students focused on giving back to their community for MLK Day. Students volunteered at different organizations in the Lynn community helped with packaging food at shelters, collecting and donating canned goods, supporting a Knights of Columbus breakfast, cleaning at the YMCA, and writing letters or decorating envelopes for Letters Against Depression.
St. Stephen's Youth Programs (SSYP)
MPF Fellows Dede Evans and Khia White-Mack serve at SSYP where they celebrated the MLK Day of Service by designating a day of healing for staff -- to reimagine how as an agency they want to do service. They did many activities that involve community building like dancing together, creating music together, and doing a healing exercise with a trauma response group from Boston.
Youth Enrichment Services (YES)
MPF Fellow Aaliyah Yarde supported YES' annual Diversity Day event at Pats Peak ski mountain in Henniker, NH. Diversity Day is an event that supports YES' efforts to diversify ski mountains across New England. Youth from schools in Dorchester with no skiing experience were invited to come on the trip as an introduction to winter sports.
Fellow / Supervisor Mid-Year Meeting
This past January, MPF fellows and supervisors came together for the mid-year meeting. Although the fellows get together for monthly meetings and community building events, all supervisors only come together with fellows twice a year on Northeastern campus. During the meeting, we were able to mingle with supervisors from all sites in small discussion groups on topics such as middle school programming, after-school programming, planning trips and events, and many more.

Fellows and supervisors also participated in a Project Management training provided by MPF alum, Minh. Minh provided insight on how to prioritize project tasks and identify strategies for successful project management. We learned that communication and reporting are some important skills when it comes to project management.
Thanks to the hard work of all our fellows and host site organizations, the 2022-2023 service year is flying by. As a cohort, we have 15 fellows serving across 14 different host sites including 31% serving at the programs they participated in as youth. At the meeting, MPF Director, Christine Roque gave us an snapshot of the work we have done so far:

  • Fellows have collectively served 547 youth for a total of 13,456 hours
  • Fellows hosted a total of 1,250 workshops, college tours, 1:1 college/academic advising groups, etc.
  • Fellows have recruited 43 volunteers to support their programs

We are excited to see what the rest of the year will bring!
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Updates and Announcements
In Other MPF News...
Pass The Wagon will be back this spring!
Save the date: April 28, 2023

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MPF IS RECRUITING for the upcoming 2023-2024 service year! APPLY HERE