Turning 20: Big Sunday’s MOBS is here
Photo by Bill Devlin
Big Sunday is celebrating its 20th anniversary of the very first Big Sunday with a project called “Big Sunday’s Greatest Hits.” The event takes place Sun., May 19 at an under-served Los Angeles Unified School, Lovelia Flournoy Elementary School in South Los Angeles, very close to the Nickerson Gardens housing project.
According to Rachel Schwartz, spokesperson for Big Sunday, volunteers will be painting murals, planting gardens, cleaning, creating a teachers’ lounge, collecting and donating food and clothing, and doing lots more, including hosting various enrichments programs on May 19.
There will also be food and music for all the participants. And, in classic Big Sunday fashion, the organization is not just doing this for the community, but with the community, too. (Before Big Sunday became a year-round organization, and was still a one-, two- or three-day weekend event, that weekend traditionally was filled with hundreds of projects like the one that will take place at Lovelia Flournoy School on May 19 — hence the “Big Sunday’s Greatest Hits” designation).
Starting small
Big Sunday was started 20 years ago by founder, executive director and Hancock Park resident David Levinson as a single day of service known as Mitzvah Day. Volunteers completed 19 different projects helping seniors, homeless, shut-ins, the environment and more. This progressed each year, and continued to grow, engaging thousands of people, and eventually outgrew the one day and became Big Sunday Weekend. Big Sunday Weekend was so popular that the organization outgrew the weekend and became an independent, non-denominational nonprofit offering more than 2,000 ways for people to help 365 days a year. Nevertheless, Big Sunday Weekend in May remained the organization’s largest event. In 2016, Big Sunday couldn’t fit all the projects into one weekend, so it expanded into MOBS.
For a list of projects visit; mobs.bigsunday.org/project/.
Category: News
