As children, and even as adults, we often breathe a sigh of relief when a holiday boosts our typical weekend into a three-day resting and mindless-partying hiatus. But delve deeper into the significance of each holiday and one may come to appreciate just what is being celebrated.

It was only seven years ago that the UW started to sponsor the MLK Day of Service. The holiday originates from the commemoration of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s work, but has changed slightly in meaning since 1994, when Congress passed the King Holiday and Service Act, designating the Jan. 19 as a national day of volunteer service. Since then, the UW has done its part in abiding by the law.

Various clubs, organizations and students, graduates and undergraduates alike, participated in the all-day event, which took place yesterday all over the greater Seattle area.

“There is a great variety of service projects that take place as part of the MLK Day of Service at the University of Washington,” said Matthew Wojciakowski, the Carlson Center’s 2009 coordinator of the MLK Day of Service. “The Carlson Center works with the United Way to reach out to local-community-serving organizations and ask what needs they have that might be met by a one-day service event. These organizations coordinate the service projects, decide how many volunteers they could utilize and provide any necessary information and supplies for volunteers to hit the ground running during the Day of Service.”

In a sense, the MLK Day of Service is more than just a one-day event. It can be, and most certainly is, aimed at initiating more volunteer work.

“Most service organizations require volunteers to participate in a certain level of training in order to directly serve their clients, which is one reason why the MLK Day of Service is not an end in itself,” said Wojciakowski, “but can also provide volunteers with a starting place to become involved in an ongoing service relationship with the organization they work with.”

Because the day is a national holiday, students of all majors can participate in community service, bringing more possibilities as far as the types of work that can be accomplished.

“Many of these service projects involve fairly simple tasks such as cleaning, painting and beautifying transitional housing rooms; clearing invasive plant growth in Seattle’s natural habitats; clearing trash from neighborhood parks; or sorting donated food or clothing,” said Wojciakowski.

There are projects such as The Giving Tree, which sews up aprons from salvaged fabric for The Giving Tree’s toymakers, to projects like the Real Change organization’s day of social advocacy, where volunteers march, rally and have the opportunity to meet with state representatives to address concerns that impact everyday citizens.

Graduate student Eytan Navah was one of the many people involved in yesterday’s event, but he isn’t part of an organization or sponsored by anyone — he simply wanted to help.

“I decided to be a project leader because I wanted to give back to the community, and I thought this would be a good way to connect with other people who want to do good work, and this is an important event as well,” said Navah.

Upon completion of his year-long AmeriCorp project, Navah continually sought out opportunities and recalls that he found out about the MLK Day of Service through AmeriCorp. He said that organizing the project was not difficult at all.

“There was a meeting at UW for anybody who was interested in being a project leader at the beginning of December,” said Navah.

Navah’s project involves food distribution at the third-annual rally that was held at Garfield High School. To Navah, as it may be for many others, it is not merely about volunteering for a day.

“If you think about why we are celebrating this day, which isn’t just to have an extra day off, but the significance of giving back to your community, helping people rise up out of oppression, being kind and using this day to reflect on what Martin Luther King stood for, then volunteering just seems like the right thing to do,” Navah said.

As students, we can often get whirled up in a storm full of activities, but Navah feels that volunteering is something that everybody can do.

“I think that for the most part as students need to think about what we can do to help out, and if it’s not MLK Day, it should be something else. Everybody can take some time out to give back in some way. I think it’s important,” Navah said.

Sophomore Michael Peralta was involved in the event last year, and he too sees the MLK Day of Service event as a crucial aspect of building a better community.

“MLK Day is so important because it allows us to both celebrate and commemorate the challenges and distinctions of our past,” said Peralta. “It is extremely essential that the UW be so involved in the MLK Day of Service because being such a large institution bears a large responsibility. What better way to transfer that responsibility than to us as students?”

Peralta’s project last year involved efforts to restore pristine salmon habitats along the Cedar River.

“There were less than 40 of us that planted approximately 400 trees on a restoration site alongside the river,” said Peralta. “The idea of being able to know that you made a difference without even feeling like it was much work was empowering.”

This year, Peralta’s project also involved the environment and was run by the UW Earth Club, but this time it was an effort to remove invasive species, such as blackberries.

Last year, Peralta volunteered through an organization called the Dream Project, a student-initiated high-school outreach program that helps first-generation and low-income students attend college.

This year, the Dream Project initiated a project to plant trees and restore the environment at Cheasty Greenspace on Beacon Hill.

Sophomore Luke McKinley was the project leader this year, and he sees the day as a great way to participate in community service and further the Dream Project’s mission.

“Part of the idea behind [volunteering] was that it would be an avenue for high school students to get some community service,” said McKinley. “It’s different from what we typically do but still keeps in mind the tenets of service.”

McKinley feels that participating in community service is what big organizations, such as the Dream Project, should do.

“Dream Project has grown so big, and we realize that it’s valuable to the community, and opportunities like the MLK Day of Service are there to help strengthen that sense of community,” McKinley said. “We seek opportunities like this to make Dream Project an even stronger force in the community.”

The MLK Day of Service projects vary greatly, as do the reasons for them, but the constant theme behind this event seems to be a genuine desire to help.

“The MLK Day of Service is an extraordinary event, however, because it is one time of year when the entire university has the opportunity to gather together in service,” Wojciakowski said. “It is a truly remarkable and encouraging sight to see so many caring individuals gathered together of their own free will, receiving no payment or special recognition, but with the selfless intention to play whatever part they can in supporting others.”

As a whole, the Carlson Center’s organization of the MLK Day of Service allows the UW community as a whole to participate and leave its mark in the greater Seattle community.

“The University of Washington has tremendous potential to improve our local community and our world,” Wojciakowski said. “By supporting an event like the Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service, I believe that the UW is sending a message. Not simply that we are willing to spend an afternoon scrubbing floors, but that we care and that we are listening. We are listening to what those in our community need and laboring in preparation to meet those needs head-on.”

Reach reporter Aejung Yoon at features@dailyuw.com.