Global Youth Service Day

GYSD, as they say in the biz, is today/this weekend. It's a cool idea, empower youth to work and take pride in helping their communities. At Seabrook Middle School, the whole school skipped classes this morning to work on service projects with us City Year kids. The 7th grade picked 42 pounds of trash off the beach. The 5th grade cleaned up the trails behind their community center. The 8th grade planted flowers and spread mulch all around the school. And the 6th grade painted four-square, hopscotch, a multiplication chart, and the entire solar system on the blacktop where the younger kids have recess. It is beautiful.

I got to give a welcome speech to the school before we got started. Here's what I said:

Good morning. My name is Michelle McMillan, first year City Year corps member proudly serving here at Seabrook Middle School. Welcome to Global Youth Service Day!

Today you will be joining hundreds of youth across New Hampshire and millions of kids all over the world making a difference. In 120 countries, students like yourselves are coming together to impact their communities. In India, twelve-hundred trees will be planted this weekend to stop the destruction of their environment. In Zambia, youth will clean up the area surrounding a clinic and remove grass areas where mosquitoes live. In Manchester, middle schoolers are painting murals and picking up litter in local parks, and here we are cleaning the beach and beautifying our school. The projects you are working on today are part of a much, much larger impact young people are having on the world.

I’m sure you’ve heard, at least once in your life, “You can’t do that, wait till you grow up”. If you remember one thing from today, remember that you don’t have to wait till you are older to make a difference in the world!

To paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr.: Everybody can be great because everybody can serve. You don’t have to get straight As to serve. You don’t have to hit home runs to serve. You don’t have to wear cool shoes to serve and you don’t have to be 18 years old to serve. All you need is a heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.

Thank you all for serving today and proving that young people can make a difference. And a special thanks to the student leadership team for all their ideas and hard work that made today possible (would the student leadership team stand up and be recognized). Have a wonderful day!

Here's Martin Luther King, Jr.'s speech that I stole the quote from. I was thinking about the quote a lot today. Especially as I was asked to do silly things while I was exhausted and grumpy.

A heart full of grace and a soul generated by love.

Soul generated by love. Made by love, created by love, crafted by love. Who was my soul crafted by? By the love of all the people in my life. By Mom and Dad and Danny and Grandma. By Marieke and Mary and Callie. By Tamie and Jillian and Emily and Eleanor and Rachel and Rusty and Nick. By Amanda and Jodi and Blaze and Kevin and Tyler.

Heart full of grace. How does my heart get full of grace? It is running dry now. I kneel down and drink from a stream of grace thousands of times a day without realizing it. Watching each and every one of my students grow and explore and make it through one more day. Being with my team mates and room mates as we persevere through all manner of silliness. The fourth grader who thanked me after school today for painting a solar system for him, then disappeared into his classroom shouting "I got to thank them!"

It helps to stop to remember that I do have these things with me all the time. It didn't help a lot, I was still grumpy and exhausted after giving myself the above pep talk, but it helps.

Now my sore, sunburnt body and I are going to go to bed so I can wake up tomorrow and celebrate GYSD at another school tomorrow!

I'll post pictures as soon as I get the energy to download them. Goodnight!