With Salem’s rehab & restoration underway, it was a great pleasure to receive a helping hand. The Westchester Graduate Chapter of Groove Phi Groove Social Fellowship Incorporated came by the church as part of their community service and outreach efforts to do some demolition. On Saturday, (under the instruction of Salem’s Head of Building & Services, Luis) the brothers of Groove took to moving furniture, pulling down beams, ripping down paneling and taking out the trash. The eight man crew, while laughing and joking with one another, made quick work of the Chapel and offered to come back at a later date to help with other restoration efforts. We at Salem couldn’t be more thankful for their hard work and dedication to serving the community.
Groove Phi Groove, Social Fellowship Incorporated was founded on October 12,1962, by fourteen, young African American men who attended Morgan State College, which is now known as Morgan State University in Baltimore, MD. Keeping in step with the reawakening of what has been termed “Black Consciousness”, these men incorporated the prominent cultural and nationalistic ideologies and creeds of the Black Power Movement into an organization that endeavors to continue the process of uplifting the black man.
Groove Phi Groove, Social Fellowship Incorporated was conceived and established as a result of the obligation to address, combat and earnestly try to resolve the increasing complexity and seriousness of man’s problems in general and those of the African American people in particular. Realizing and accepting the duty to elucidate a viable solution to the predicament of the African American in the Diaspora, the Fellowship is dedicated to cultivating and encouraging distinguished ethical and scholastic standards, improving the socioeconomic stature of the African American, prompting unity and camaraderie among African American college men, as well as inducing the graduate to sustain an energetic and practical connection and interest in college life as well as the progressive movement emanating from the university. Love, brotherhood, academic prowess, duty, community service, unity, pride, and self-respect are the primary ethics and decent principles upon which and from whence Groove Phi Groove, Social Fellowship Incorporated was founded and is maintained.
The Mission of the Westchester Graduate Chapter is to engender a foundation that would generate positive energy and insight in the African-American communities in the Bronx and lower Westchester. As part of the Project 2000 phase of our chapter, they have created several initiatives to help address and resolve the problems affecting African-American men. Their projects include strengthening the community presence by working closely with local organizations; participating in the local politics, as well as in other communities throughout the United States, increasing their chapter’s membership through an aggressive campaign at the nation’s leading Graduate and Professional schools, and recruiting professionals employed in various fields and backgrounds. As a professional chapter, the Westchester Graduate Chapter of Groove Phi Groove S.F.I. is dedicated to the development and growth of their fellowship, and promoting unity and pride within the African-American community by implementing the right balance of business, political action, community service, fellowship and unity.
Learn more about them at: http://www.westchestergroovers.com