Hundreds of young volunteers in LA work to beautify their community on MLK Day

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Martin Luther King Jr. Day is also a national day of service, and on Monday hundreds of volunteers in Los Angeles got to work to beautify some of the local schools.

Approximately 400 volunteers worked on beautifying their community. The beneficiary of that work was L.A.'s Fairfax High School. Students and members of the nonprofit "City Year Los Angeles", a team of adults who work with students to achieve school success, worked on beautifying the 100-year-old school.

"The more that they see in the schools with all the murals and the warmth that that brings and the comfortability, it makes the students want to come to school to learn to thrive," said volunteer Jazmine Martinez.

At 42nd Street Elementary School, the community group Big Sunday, had hundreds of volunteers working on winter weather kits for the South Los Angeles community. Big Sunday has been around since 1989 and has been doing this type of work for more than a decade -- bringing all groups together to help out.

"It's all about the people. It's the human element and bringing all of these people together for one purpose -- to do better," said Dr. Barbara DEnson Trotter, ED.D, of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority.

"We are actually moms here with our children so it's extra. It fills us up even more that our kids get to see this and we're setting a standard for being part of a community, helping people you don't know," said Natalie Lembeck.

The organizers of this event stress that volunteering is a great way to strengthen your community.

"Absolutely everyone has a way they can help somebody else. Absolutely everyone has sometime that they need help and Lord knows we have to look out for one another," said David levinson, of Big Sunday.