PHILADELPHIA, PA, January 8, 2025– Organizers, sponsors, and community partners joined together in a ceremony at Girard College to announce plans for the upcoming 30th annual Greater Philadelphia Martin Luther King Day of Service on the January 20 federal holiday.
The Greater Philadelphia King Day of Service, celebrating its milestone 30th Anniversary, is the oldest and largest King Day of Service event in the nation and includes Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware. The National King Day of Service was created in 1994 through federal legislation co-authored by Pennsylvania U.S. Senator Harris Wofford and Atlanta Congressman John Lewis, both veterans of the civil rights movement with Dr. King.
Girard College will serve as the region’s signature project site for the sixteenth consecutive year. “Girard College is pleased to once again serve as the signature site for Global Citizen’s Greater Philadelphia MLK Day of Service,” said David Hardy, president of Girard College. “For more than 176 years, Girard has transformed the lives of young men and women into the next generation of leaders in our society. As our region’s only independent, private, tuition-free residential college preparatory 1st through 12th-grade school, Girard College emphasizes academic excellence and character development to help prepare students for college, careers, and lifelong success.”
Joye Nottage, Executive Director of the Philadelphia MLK Association, stated, “On Dr. King’s National Holiday, our Founder, Dr. C. Delores Tucker, and the board of directors of the Philadelphia MLK Association made the decision that they wanted to use Dr. King’s National Holiday, to host a sit-down luncheon, where awards are given and individuals who do some of the kinds of work that Dr. King did while he lived, are honored. This luncheon event, which we host every year, is the one and only fundraiser our organization hosts in a 12-month time frame to help us fuel the programs we operate at different points each year. While we applaud what other organizations do to honor Dr. King, this is what we choose to do.”
The overarching theme for the Greater Philadelphia King of Service is Dr. King’s vision of The Beloved Community, where all people work for justice, diversity, peace, and freedom, without poverty, hunger, or hate. 2025 also marks the 60th anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
“This year’s King federal holiday also marks the inauguration of a new president,” said Todd Bernstein, president of Global Citizen and founder and director of the Greater Philadelphia King Day of Service. “It is perhaps more critical now than ever to reaffirm our commitment to Dr. King’s values, principles, and mission, to dedicate ourselves to his legacy—pursuing the cause of justice, fairness, democracy, and freedom.
Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker presented the 27th annual Harris Wofford Active Citizenship Award Pennsylvania to State Senator Vincent Hughes “for his longtime support of Global Citizen and Greater Philadelphia Martin Luther King Day of Service and your lifetime commitment to voting rights and public service.”
Previous award winners are Ed Hazzouri, Chairman, Hazzouri & Associates; Scott Charles, Trauma Outreach Manager for Temple University Hospital; former Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt; Dr. Ala Stanford; the Urban Affairs Coalition; Ready, Willing and Able; Rev. David Brown; Mary Strasser; Eastern State Penitentiary; WURD Radio; Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church; Loraine Ballard Morrill; Ken Salaam; Philadelphia Fire Department; Vanguard; YouthBuild Philadelphia Charter School; Sacaree Rhodes; Al-Aqsa Islamic Academy and Perelman Jewish Day School; Rev. Henry Wells; City Year Greater Philadelphia; Cristine James Brown; the School District of Philadelphia; Mural Arts Philadelphia; National School and Community Corps; Woodlynde School and Jack Neary.
Student artists selected from area schools (Girard College, Al-Aqsa Islamic Academy, Ellwood Elementary School, and Barrack Hebrew Academy) unveiled the King Day of Service mural. The students, led (for the twenty-eighth year) by Mural Arts Philadelphia’s (MAP) executive director, Jane Golden, community murals project manager, Donnell Powell, and artists Dyymond Whipper-Young and Priscilla Bell, were given an assignment “to create a mural which represents your ideas of and hopes for the Beloved Community.”
The artists worked for two months with the students on visits to each school. The students discussed, designed, and painted individual 5’X6’ panels, which were joined together and unveiled as one dramatic 5’X24’ mural. Jane Golden spoke about the project and was joined by student speakers from each school, who shared the meaning and relevance of their murals.
Philadelphia Orchestra Vice President for Education and Community Danielle Allen announced plans for the 35th annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Tribute Concert, presented by PECO. The concert, to be conducted by Damon Gupton, will take place for the tenth year in the Girard College Chapel on January 20, beginning at 3 pm (doors open at 2 pm). Free tickets are available at philorch.org/mlk2025.
More than forty-five King Day of Service sponsors are led by Independence Blue Cross. “Independence Blue Cross is proud to be the lead sponsor of the 30th Annual Greater Philadelphia Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service, and I am honored to serve as one of the co-chairs,” said Gregory E. Deavens, president and CEO of Independence Blue Cross. “This day embodies our commitment to volunteerism and Dr. King’s principles, which we celebrate year-round. IBX has supported this impactful event for decades, but we are especially excited about this year’s event and its important theme of “The Beloved Community.” We agree with Dr. King’s vision of building a community where we all work for and celebrate justice, diversity, peace, and freedom in a world without poverty, hunger, or hate.”
Signature project opportunities at Girard College will include:
• Lead sponsor Independence Blue Cross leading volunteers sorting and packing toiletry kits, which will be distributed to people in need living in underserved communities, in partnership with the Mayor Cherelle Parker’s Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood and Community Engagement (MONCE) new mini-City Halls. At the conclusion of the King Day of Service project, the kits will be transported by the City of Philadelphia to the MONCE mini-City Hall at the Church of Christian Compassion/Community of Compassion Inc., 6150 Cedar Ave. West Philadelphia, 19143, for distribution on dates and times to be determined.
• Mural Arts Philadelphia leading Printmaking by the People: Citywide Voices on 2026 – a hands-on workshop focusing on the Declaration of Independence, printmaking, and the power of posters. The project includes a presentation and discussion led by artists and facilitators in which participants will be asked to reflect on what the rights referenced in the Declaration of Independence—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—mean to them today and what they might add if they were writing a new Declaration today. Participants will design and print posters that reinterpret key ideas in the Declaration. The posters will inspire a mural in Center City and an exhibition at the Parkway Central Library in 2026, and they will be digitized and made accessible to the public in an online archive.
• The Committee of Seventy leading volunteers assembling Civic Engagement Starter Kits: Understanding How Philly Works, a hands-on project designed to provide accessible, actionable tools for understanding and navigating Philadelphia’s government. These kits are part of a broader effort to expand the reach of the How Philly Works brand as a trusted resource for civic education.
•A Rally for Peace & Justice will focus on the history of Girard College and civil rights activism, with music and cultural presentations organized by the Cecil B. Moore Philadelphia Freedom Fighters, the organization that led efforts to desegregate Girard College in the 1960s.
•A Health & Wellness Fair, led by the Black Doctors Consortium, will include professionals providing information and guidance on community health services, including behavioral health.
Updated information on service opportunities is available on Facebook– facebook.com/ globalcitizen365 and Twitter– twitter.com/mlkdayofservice. The hashtag is #MLKDAY2025.
Global Citizen organizes the Greater Philadelphia King Day of Service and year-round civic engagement programs. Anyone interested in volunteering or hosting a service project should register at mlkdayofservice.org or call 215-259-8374.
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