Maroon Volunteer and Volunteer Starkville celebrated national Make A Difference Day by cleaning local parks, beginning with the J.L. King Senior Memorial Park, where Starkville's Halloween festivities are set to take place this weekend.
"Make A Difference Day is a national holiday where communities organize projects all over the U.S. in order to have a day of service," Volunteer Starkville Executive Director Daphne Knox said. "For Starkville, we are doing beautification and cleanup projects."
Make A Difference Day is a family-friendly national service day where parents are encouraged to bring their children to help with the efforts. Cleanup took place from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Friday afternoon, when most children were out of school and most university age students were out of class.
"We are also having a cemetery cleanup tomorrow in conjunction with Make A Difference Day so that the service day kind of falls into a weekend instead of just one day," Knox said. Maroon Volunteer will have the Odd Fellows Cemetery Beautification from 8 a.m. to noon at the Odd Fellows Cemetery on Fellowship Street on Saturday.
A group of Mississippi State University students participated in the cleanup day on Friday as part of a class project.
"This is part of a service project where we go around and volunteer where we can and give back in the community," sports studies major Brianna May said. "For our Small Group Communication class, Amy Knight wanted us to do service projects. We're giving back and seeing a different perspective of other peoples' lives compared to ours."
Accounting major Brian Haadsma is also a part of the small group communication class.
"We decided this would be a good place to start, with picking up the parks," Haadsma said.
Social work major Moneice Cheeks received a notification through email about the volunteer opportunity and wanted to help clean the park for families who would visit for Halloween festivities Saturday evening.
"I saw it on OrgSync and it said make a difference," Cheeks said. "It's a Friday, I don't have anything to do so I figured why not go out and help so the kids can have a good time on Halloween?"
Knox said Volunteer Starkville's final national service day of the year will be Nov. 18 during Family Volunteer Day. A donation of 20,000 pounds of sweet potatoes will be dropped in the Commuter West Parking Lot on the MSU campus. Families can help bag the sweet potatoes beginning at 8 a.m. and distribute them to local food pantries and churches to go to families in need.