The 6th Annual Day of King celebration was held this past Saturday on April 13th, at Dr. Martin Luther King Junior Middle School in San Bernardino. “We were having a conversation with our board member Margaret Hill in terms of, that students nowadays sometimes don’t know who the person the school was named after and so we wanted to definitely make sure that our student population knew who Dr. Martin Luther King was. So it was a brain child of that conversation in terms of what can we do that, you know, is incorporated in to everything we do and definitely honoring the memory and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King,” stated 10-year principal Maria Jauregui.
The event started out with the pledge of allegiance and key speakers who shared their memories of Dr. King. That was followed by free food, tuneful music, enjoyable activities and prizes for the kids to enjoy. The main objective of this event was to get the community involved in learning about the origin of Martin Luther King and to make them aware of all the free resources and services that are offered to the community. “We try to bring as many different organizations in our community together to one, support the community that surrounds us here... Everything is free, like all the services that we have here today are free to the community,” said Vice Principal, Harold Olivo.
There were all sorts of booths set up with free resources to help and educate the community including: the Inland Regional Center, The Hope Medical Mobile Health Clinic, Young Visionaries Youth Leadership Academy, Metropolitan Family Medical Clinics, Inc., Law Offices of Public Defender, and many others.
The Hope Medical Mobile Health Clinic was one of the many vendors offering free services to the community. They were taking visitor’s blood pressure and provided the community with essential information to better understand their services. “We service our homeless and the low income. We have two examining rooms in the unit, there is also lab work that can be done in the unit, the medication is distributed in the unit. We also have locations in Riverside, Victorville area, San Bernardino area,” explained Jeanette Tobias, volunteer with the Health to Hope Mobile Unit. This event shed a lot of light on all the services provided to the community, especially medical care. “The community can be aware of the fact that we do have this service that we offer to the community, we normally would have a nurse on board, a PA on board or a nurse’s assistant on board and they would be distributing the medication, they would be doing the lab work, they would be taking care of the patient, anything you can do in a regular clinic, we can do here in this here mobile unit. If there are any referrals that have to be made, the PA will give a referral to the nearest hospital so they can be taken care of,” mentioned Tobias.
One other booth that was getting a lot of foot traffic was Project Fighting Chance with the program coordinator, Charles Wagner. He was out there to help teach and provide kids with positive ways to express and outlet their anger. “ It is a anger release for kids, what we try to do is we offer kids free anger release, free athletic activities everyday Monday through Friday. We have different activities, we have art, chess, guitar lessons, chess club, as well, these going throughout the week. We also feed kids everyday when they get there and when they leave we feed them. Like I said the program is free. We have all the equipment the kids need only thing they need is hand wraps that you might get at Walmart or BIG 5 for two or three dollars other than that the program is free. We just try to get the kids on positive activities you know so by the time they leave us they are pretty much ready to go to sleep. So our kids are not the kids that are tearing up the city, they are some of the kids that have positive role models and they have positive people around them, that can keep them away from gangs and drug violence and stuff like that,” said Wagner.
This was a great community event that provided well needed knowledge to all, “It just keeps getting bigger and better and it is the first Saturday right after spring break. . . so mark your calendars and just get out here and enjoy, there is free food, there’s prizes, there’s raffles, there’s tons of vendors who are ready to give you and offer you the services that they have,” stated Jauregui. Don’t miss out next year!