NC nonprofit partners with High Point students to transform local community center 

For more than 20 students at High Point University, Martin Luther King Jr. Day isn’t just a day off—it’s a day on for acts of service. 

“At High Point, we’re in a bubble,” Sierra Wilder, a senior at High Point University, said after taking off her paint-covered gloves, finishing her paint shift. “So we like to get out the gates and basically come five minutes down the street to community centers to paint classrooms for the kids to give them a brighter look, and to excel in their learning atmosphere.

Wilder, who is also a member of the university’s Black Student Union, was one of more than 20 students using rollers and brushes to paint the walls at the Northwood Community Center in High Point for a brand new initiative called the “MLK Jr. Day Beautification Project.”

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The initiative, hosted by Operation Xcel, a North Carolina nonprofit organization and free after-school program, partnered with HPU’s BSU and Black Cultural Awareness chapters. There, the students painted 10 classrooms, two hallways, two bathrooms, and a bathroom lobby at the center, which serves K-5 children, by the end of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

The center, affiliated with a local United Methodist church, also provides childcare, consignment clothing, food drives, and more to this High Point neighborhood and community. 

For many, MLK Jr. Day is not just about honoring Dr. King’s legacy, but also actively engaging in community service, as he encouraged. And for students at the university’s BSU, Wilder said community, along with culture and conversation, are the three pillars that hold up the organization. 

“And with community being such a big pillar that we like to stand for, we like to strive to basically give back to our community,” Wilder said.  

 

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The Northwood Community Center is one of eight sites the organization works with across the state. Lori Ann Walton, family engagement specialist and volunteer coordinator for Operation Xcel, said the beautification project was created for the children who attend the center as part of their learning experiences, since children learn from what they see.

“We’re just so grateful that these students came out today to paint and make the space better and more lively,” said Walton. “We are not the typical after school program, although we do provide the homework help and the enrichment. Every day, we’re just trying to touch on, tap in, and decrease the disparities that we know exist with Black or brown children.” 

According to the organization’s blog, Operation Xcel, which stands for “Promoting eXcellent Communities, Education and Leadership,” was founded by Charlene Gladney in 2008 as a response to the growing number of student dropouts in the Greensboro region. Since then the organization has served hundreds of students, from kindergarten to middle school, across the Piedmont Triad. From its 2023 annual report, the organization has put in over 90,000 hours that improved the students’ growth in math, ELA, and science subjects.  

In education, Walton said as an organization, they believe in “social emotional learning”—teaching that emphasizes relationships and emotions as much as the typical classroom subjects—because a lot of their children carry more than just books in their book bags.

“Some of them pack poverty, some of them pack hunger, some of their dreams are a little bit smaller or bigger, and they just don’t even know how to achieve them,” said Walton. “So every day, our job is to really not just build on the academics and the enrichment, but just to encourage them and let them know that they can dream as big as they would like, and every dream is lucid.”

HPU students painted the center’s walls mint green—a color that represents growth, harmony and renewal, they said. For Emmanuel Sharpe, a senior and BSU member, the project was about creating a fresh, welcoming space for the children who use the community center. 

“When kids see something brand new and different, they get excited,” Sharpe said. “It feels like a renovation for them, and it motivates them to learn better.”

Unlike Sharpe, many of the students participated in the project as first-time painters—and it came with its own set of challenges and rewards. 

 

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“It was a lot more work than I thought it would be because I’ve never painted before,” said HPU freshman Alex Muravski, who spent MLK Jr. Day doing several service projects. “But it was actually really fun and it was awesome to be able to do it in a group, all working towards the same goal together.”