Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Giving Back

DETROIT (WJBK) -- It is not always easy to put the needs of others before your own, but that feeling you get when you serve your fellow man is phenomenal. That is something Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior believed in and my sorority sisters do, too.

On the day when the nation remembers the dream, the legacy of Dr. King, for the ladies of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Incorporated, service is in the center of it all.

"I think it's more than auspicious that Martin Luther King was actually born on January 15th and Alpha Kappa Alpha was born on January 15th in 1908. Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority is an organization of college educated women, and we want to reach into the community and make sure as many women can be educated as possible," said Miriam Blanks-Smart, Pitau Omega president.

A recent gathering was all about giving as this sisterhood lends a helping hand to another -- the young mothers at Catherine Ferguson Academy in Detroit.

"We are going to stock a closet at the Catherine Ferguson academy," Blanks-Smart explained.

The AKA Care Closet is what they'll call it and in it will be everything you can imagine to support, educate and empower the girls to get their lives back on track.

"They're trying to pull their lives up after some adversity and make sure that their children's lives are far better than theirs in terms of their preparation so that they won't make the mistakes that they may have made in having children as teenagers. So, they want their children to be educated, and they're taking the first step by making sure that they are educated and graduate from high school," Blanks-Smart said. "We want to help them."

On the MLK Day of Service, a day of remembrance, least we forget those who are serving and sacrificing for each of us every day -- our veterans, their families and the military servicemen and women.

"It is an honor to us to be able to say thank you for the men and women who have sacrificed their lives, sacrificed their families for this country and for our freedoms," said Mary Hall-Thiam, Delta Psi Omega president.

"It makes you really go out and represent those persons who take the time to say we care. We love you. We support you, and certainly as you go over there, we realize that you don't say no to us, so we won't say no to you," said First Lieutenant Demetries Luckett with the Michigan Army National Guard.

"Those dreams of Martin Luther King fit directly with the selfless work of our military veterans and our current service people," Blanks-Smart said.

AKA chapters throughout metro Detroit and Ann Arbor sponsor this celebration hoping the spirit of service to all mankind will continue on.

"I want them to think about what they owe to society and to the next generation and to the memory of not only Dr. King, but to being an activist," Hall-Thiam said.

Though there is always more work to be done, as we continue to follow the dream, on this day, Dr. King, "I think he would say I am proud of you. I see that my message, I see that my actions, I see that my ideology that I worked so hard [for] and others, that it is taking root and that it is growing in the 21st century of this world," Hall-Thiam told us.