Every year, MOSAIC and other UCCS organizations hold celebrations and events to celebrate Martin Luther King and promote activism. While typically held in January, the events were rescheduled to begin next week due to COVID-19 restrictions.
The UCCS Days of Service and Action is a week-long event hosted by MOSAIC and other organizations that aims to allow students to be able to attend events that focus on activism, advocacy and the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr. The events will begin Saturday, April 23 and run until Friday, April 29.
“We ended up pushing it to later on down the semester because we found that there will be value in being able to have some of those [events] in person while still prioritizing hybrid and hyflex spaces,” said Whitley Hadley, director of MOSAIC and the LGBTQ+ Resource Center.
The events are hosted by multiple organizations, including but not limited to MOSAIC and LGBTQ+ Resource Center, UCCSlead and Student Life. These organizations combined their efforts to create a thorough and event-filled week with something that everyone can enjoy and gain from.
The kickoff events on Saturday, April 23 will include a leadership workshop and volunteer projects, according to Hadley.
“[We will] kick it off with a breakfast that’s [focused] on everyday leadership. Afterwards, folks will be able to go to a variety of different service sites that have connections to the UCCS community. For example, one of the service sites is the Family Development Center across the street. Many of the UCCS students and staff have children over there,” Hadley said.
The main event on Monday, April 25, is the Stop Racism event, which is “an event for all students of UCCS to come together to create a space to talk about issues on campus concerning race, to share experiences, and to talk about solutions to make campus more inclusive to all students,” according to the Days of Service and Action website.
On Tuesday, April 26, the Matrix Center is hosting another conference in UC 307 called “We don’t know what we don’t know,” an event that seeks to discuss cultural humility by answering the question: “How do we recognize this and create inclusive spaces across our differences?”
Wednesday, April 27 will feature the MOSAIC Safe Zone, an in-depth training that gives students tools to build safe places for LGBTQ communities.
“It’s a training that is focused on advocacy and better understanding of our LGBTQ populations, and that will be happening [in MOSAIC] between 1 and 4 p.m.,” Hadley said.
Thursday, April 28 has two large events: the UndocuPeer Workshop and the Poetry 719 Workshop. The UndocuPeer workshop is “a training to increase knowledge to better support undocumented, DACA, ASSET, and students from mixed-status families,” according to the Days of Service and Action website. Poetry 719 is a community poetry organization that allows individuals to share poetry and express themselves through written and spoken word.
The final day of events on April 29 features a breakfast presentation, a volunteer experience to aid in cleaning up a local creek, and the film screening. The film is called “Coded Bias,” and it closes out the week as the final event.
“The last [event] will be hosted by the women in cybersecurity and a student chapter at UCCS. … [The film] is looking at how bias infiltrates and still permeates spaces such as computer science and technology fields,” Hadley said.
These events are open to students, staff, faculty and alumni. To sign up and gather more details about the events, visit the link to their website.