Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Marjorie Matsushita Sperling Interview
Narrator: Marjorie Matsushita Sperling
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Culver City, California
Date: February 24, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-smarjorie-01-0028

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MS: And then, but the one that I really am proud about is that I felt that teenagers needed to do something. They were always talking about the teenagers. So I worked one year on Teens Make a Difference Day. There is a national program by the USA Magazine that has had a program on the third Friday in October, third Saturday in October, they call it the Community Service Day, and it's a national program. And so I wrote this program and sold it, and I have a copy of it. But anyway, to get kids to do a project, and especially those with youth groups. And so, my god, we worked very, very hard and got about six organizations to back it. We had over three thousand kids doing a project on that day. It was just wonderful because the kind of things that the kids did, just amazing. I just loved the group that decided that they would bake some goodies for animals that are in the animal shelter and took it there. Others decided they needed to clean up their areas because we want it to look good for the community. Another group of teenagers decided they would cook a meal for the women at this women's shelter because they don't have evening meals. They baked chicken and made salads and so forth, and took it down, and sat and ate with them. And others, another group decided to plant trees, another group cleaned up an area in a park that had been screened off because there were so many weeds and so forth, and they cleaned the whole thing up.

TI: That's amazing. So you've been really able to really understand and tap into this incredible resource. I mean, when you think about all the...

MS: We got an honorable mention that first year from when the USA Magazine selected all over the country. And we don't do things, we don't continue to do things. And so the Los Angeles County Human Relations took it over the next year, and they got a national award. They were given ten thousand dollars for it.

TI: Excellent.

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