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On Friday, several students from the University of Alabama came to Selma through a service-learning effort known as The Selma Ripple Initiative to contribute their time and their dedicated effort to continue the revitalization process of the upcoming Foot Soldiers Park Community Center, located at 1809 Selma Avenue.

The Selma Ripple Initiative is a program led by The Selma Resilience Initiative, which is a part of The University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Business that is geared toward helping the students of UA learn about Selma, while providing them long-life skill sets and community engagement tools that can take them far in the near future.

Last week, the students of the University partnered together alongside members of their faculty, staff including members of the Foot Soldier Park to help move items in and out of the upcoming center including furniture, and they also took their time to prime the walls as well.

On the walls, there were painted images of the words “Roll Tide”, “War Eagle” alongside multiple paintings of both Auburn mascot, Aubie the Tiger and Alabama mascot, Big Al including many others signifying the love of sports and both teams.

“I love both of them,” said Preston McGee, SRI’s Community Outreach Coordinator. But, with this community center, they want it to be a great neutral space for everyone and that’s why they are coming in to redoing it all. “

The building which is now undergone transformation by the students is currently known as the Selma Avenue Bar and Grill and was formerly known as The Selma Ave. Convenience Store, LLC.

“SRI harnesses the academic expertise and business acumen of UA’s Culverhouse College of Business to positively impact the economic development and community vitality of Selma, Alabama through collaborative partnerships,” said The Selma Resilience Initiative through an online statement.

“This trip was one of many planned “Selma Ripple Trips,” said McGee. “That fosters meaningful connections between students and the Selma Community while making a tangible impact. By engaging in hands-on service through similar trips like this, we hope to contribute to the city’s growth and inspire a lasting commitment to community-driven progress.”

McGee said that the students of UA can take the initiative to join this program twice a semester, one time within the early half of the semester and the second time, within the latter half of the semester.

“Hopefully, we will do another one of these in April,” said McGee. The first one we had, was the Selma Beautification Day that we did on Broad Street with the community gardening planters and that was in the beginning of November.

“And so, with this one, we came here to partner with the Foot Soldiers Park. So, each one of these, we’ll try to find some type of community organization to partner with and there’s two different things that tie in: First, we’re not just trying to come to Selma to duplicate efforts. We want to find organizations that we can partner with because anything that we do, we are not doing it to Selma or for Selma but with Selma. So, our motive is how can we, through these trips, find someone to work with and implicate and expedite their projects. The other part of this, is the students themselves, and our faculty and staff that are coming to engage within this initiative. Through partnerships, we want to develop a consistent UA presence in Selma to show not only that we are doing projects but to display that we are here once a month, twice a month and every other week and that this isn’t the only group of students that are coming. But, there’s actually multiple groups of different student groups from UA coming to partake in Selma and the initiative as a whole.”