Ali In-Residence Service Projects

A student researching his "Rescueland" game.
A student researching his “Rescue land” game.

Students from Whitney Young Elementary have been immersed in the culturally enriching Muhammad Ali Center experiencing our GGC “Discover Your Superpower” Program. During our program students have been learning about various causes in their community such as poverty, bullying, health, the elderly, and more. The students then learned about their various talents and how they can use their talents to give back to their community. GGC uses a simple superpower equation: MY TALENT + MY HEART= MY SUPERPOWER. This equation helps students realize that they can be real life superheroes by using their talents to improve their communities. During the service week potion of our program, students told our GGC instructors their best talent and the Heart Badge they care about. The GGC staff then organized students into groups based on the Heart Badge they indicated as the one they are most passionate about. Once we placed the students into groups, GGC elicited help from other mentors from the community to help students put together their superpower equations by coming up with ideas on how they can use their talents to help the cause they are passionate about. The students and mentors came up with many great ideas. One idea was to place Little Free Libraries all over the Louisville community, with each library containing books about one of our Heart Badges. The students created a Bullying, Animals, Veterans, Poverty, and Arts Little Library that contained books pertaining to these different causes. Students created other projects too, such as creating a donated clothes box for the Salvation Army, creating dog treats and toys for the Animal House Animal Shelter, giving books and cards to kids at Kosair Children’s Hospital, creating gifts for the elderly at a retirement home, creating songs and speeches to raise awareness about education and the safety of animals, and having a basketball fundraiser to raise money for the hurt and abandoned animals.

Students building a Little Free Library
Students building a Little Free Library

Service Project Time!
After the students created and prepared all of their service projects, they were able to see the impact of their efforts. GGC partnered with 7 different organizations, and allowed the students to deliver their service projects directly to the organization that corresponded with their Heart Badge. This allowed students to put what they learned into action and see how they can directly effect their community. For example, the Elderly Badge group delivered their gifts to a retirement home and the Poverty Badge group delivered their donations of clothes and children sport supplies and their Little Library to the Salvation Army. Here are a list of the other badges and the organizations students delivered their projects to:

  • Arts Badge Group- delivered their Little Free Library and box of children’s Arts supplies to the Louisville Visual Arts.
  • Arts Badge Louisville Visual Arts
    Dropping off art supplies and a library to Louisville Visual Arts

    Health Badge Group- delivered gifts, cards and books to children at Kosair Children’s Hospital.

  • Veterans Badge Group- delivered their Veterans themed Little Library to Veterans who live at the Salvation Army.
  • Bullying Badge Group- delivered their Little Library to the Home of the Innocence so kids could enjoy all the great books.
  • Animals Badge Group-delivered their dog treats, dog toys and Animal themed Little Library to the Animal House, which is one of the Metro Louisville’s animal shelter.
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