GLASSBORO – For the second year in a row, Catholic Charities of South Jersey participated in the 40th annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Breakfast and Day of Service on the campus of Rowan University.
“We want them [students] to know who we are,” said Dr. Maria Elena Hallion, Catholic Charities of South Jersey’s executive director. With Catholic Charities already having a relationship with the university, public events such as this also help the organization recruit volunteers and interns, she said. “We’re just excited to continue to be involved.”
A number of nonprofit organizations were set up in rooms Jan. 19 in the Mark M. Chamberlain Student Center, in what Dr. Hallion called a great way for students “to interact with more than just one nonprofit.”
For this year’s service project, students put together laundry detergent pods and placed them in plastic storage bags for distribution to Catholic Charities’ clients. They were assisted by Catholic Charities’ staff: Sharon McHugh, community development coordinator; Brandon Troutman, intensive case manager; and LaToya Haynes, resource manager.
Kiran Flieg, a Rowan student from Ashburn, Va., who entered into full communion with the Catholic Church in November 2025 at Saint Bridget University Parish, said that participating in the MLK Day of Service project was a witness to what Christ has done for all.
“We know that the world is broken in a lot of ways, and ultimately, Jesus came to free us from sin, and also to invite us into what it means to serve others in the same way that he did,” Flieg said. “To be the hands and feet of God in a broken world is really powerful.”
Before the service projects began, nearly 300 guests gathered for a breakfast that was emceed by 6ABC’s Action News anchor Rick Williams. The featured keynote was Dr. Myron Rolle, a neurosurgeon, Galloway Township native and former NFL player.
Father Vincent Guest, pastor of Sacred Heart Parish in Camden, gave the invocation as well as the benediction for the breakfast.
Father Guest said that the Day of Service instills in young people not only the importance of Dr. King and his legacy, but also their call as young adults to meet people of service and to be promoters of racial justice and harmony.
“It’s right at the heart of who we are as Catholics,” said Father Guest, who also serves as the Vicar for the City of Camden. “We say that we need to go from our heads to know our faith, to our hearts to love our faith, and to our hands to deliver our faith.”
In his benediction, Father Guest told the nearly 300 in attendance at the breakfast: “Bless us with the courage to confront racism wherever it appears, the wisdom to build bridges instead of walls, and the grace to see one another not as strangers, but as sisters and brothers bound together in shared humanity. May we remember Dr. King’s reminder that peace is not merely the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice. May that justice begin in our own choices, our classrooms, our communities and our hearts. Strengthen us to be agents of reconciliation, voices for the voiceless and servants of the common good.”
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