Volunteers with the Empowering Spirits Foundation (ESF), a national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization working to achieve equality through community service activities, worked alongside members of the faith-based community and other San Diego organizations to clean up Cholas Creek and the grounds of The Jacobs Center for Innovation as part of its Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service.“The ESF service events are a great way to help tackle many of the major issues facing Americans today – lack of affordable housing, inadequate health care, and a lack of funds for neighborhood revitalization,” said A. Latham Staples, ESF president and CEO.
“And not only are we helping those in need, but these events are designed as an educational tool to allow non-LGBT and LGBT individuals to work side by side and engage in respectful dialogue,” he said, noting that through these types of discussions, “people working alongside LGBT volunteers get to know them as typical people who are sharing in the sacrifices to improve communities.”
“This helps to promote understanding of who we really are and helps to dispel the negative stereotypes,” Staples said.
Agreeing with Staples was Don Azul, San Diego City Council candidate and executive director of the National Women Veterans Association of America, an organization which partnered with ESF for the event.
“If the goal of ESF is to eliminate barriers between groups of people then Monday’s event accomplished just that,” Azul said. “We met people from various socio-economic groups, ethnicities, religions and sexual orientations. However, classifications and affiliations did not come into play at all because for a few hours on this MLK Day morning we all came to together as people and members of a shared community.”
Volunteers from diverse organizations took part in the ESF MLK event, including San Diego Bishop Charles Johnson, San Diego city council candidate Tony Villafranca, Laura Martella and dog ‘author’ Gentleman Norman, and volunteers from the Department of Defense Federal Globe, the United African American Ministerial Action Council, The Jacobs Center for Innovation, and the Imperial Court of San Diego.
