Monday, September 14, 2009

A call to action....

SUNDAY SEPT 13
6:30 AM
My phone rung at 6:am and the voice at the other end said 'hey we are on our way' it was my friend Jonathan Sherman who lives about 45-60 min South of Portland calling to let me know that he is on his way to come joined us at the soup kitchen, where I have been volunteering on weekends with a group of young people mostly Muslims as part of their service in the month of Ramadan , but this morning I have a different group of young people they are very diverse , they are here to join their Muslims friends as they perform a religious and community service.
All the youth I am volunteering with today have one thing in common, they have all been to the Seeds of Peace camp except two . We spent the next hour prepping and cooking breakfast for the homeless population who are waiting outside for the soup kitchen to be open.The Youth were excited about the whole process and were giving it their best, for me it is an experiment in bringing this young people from different faith and culture background with the passion to serve others, together under one roof working side by side. I am going to continue this after Ramadan, it will be a monthly process after which we will have debriefing moments and see how I can work with this young people in translating this process into working with each other to help our community solve the current tension that is going on between the youth and the police. Ramadan ends in a couple of days we have another week end reserved for us to volunteer. I have a meeting with the NAACP youth council I m going to invite them to join us and the youth from another organisation, the Root Cellar, a christian non-profit in Portland Maine that serves very diverse group. I hope we have a big turn out next Saturday which will be the last time we will be volunteering this Month. I am hoping to turn this into a coalitions of young people who are ready and willing to change our community...
















I had a very fulfilling weekend, I and a group of young people from different backgrounds went to the preble street wayside soup kitchen and had fun prepping, making and serving breakfast.

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