Blog: City Blog

Summer in the City Interns Inaugurate One Love Day Tradition

Each year, the City of Knoxville’s Summer in the City interns spend six weeks embedded in City departments, getting to know how the City operates and how its departments and employees serve Knoxville residents.

In addition to completing departmental tasks, interns collaborate on a group project that helps them get to know each other and learn through experience how important their efforts as public servants and volunteers can be.

This year’s class tackled the major issue of hunger in our community with a campaign to raise awareness as well as donations. They named the campaign #FeedKnox and made their goal to reach as many people as possible to donate their time, money or canned goods to area charities that work to prevent and resolve hunger. Reaching that goal meant engaging several City employees to help spread the message, including Chief Operations Officer David Brace and Chief Policy Officer Bill Lyons, below.

David Brace, Bill Lyons

Also participating: Senior Director of Community Relations Avice Reid and Save Our Sons Community Outreach Coordinator Kevin Perry.

Even Mayor Rogero (center) got into the action when she meet with interns at their annual luncheon.

One Love Day hearts

Like all good campaigns, this one led up to a party: #OneLoveDay was celebrated on July 25, at Christenberry Recreation Center.

Voodoo Cadillac, a band comprised of current and former Knoxville police officers, entertained the crowd with blues rock hits.

The night concluded with a sing-along of the song that inspired intern advisor Kent Johnson to suggest the project's mission and name: "One Love" by Bob Marley. The lyrics got stuck in his head during his commute to work: "One love, one heart / Let's get together and feel all right."

Johnson took the opportunity to announce that the Third Thursday of July is now #OneLoveDay and a new annual tradition for getting Summer in the City interns, City staff and neighbors together to address one problem in our community.

Posted by ptravis On 26 July, 2019 at 2:37 PM