Members of Sigma Alpha Mu, a fraternity at Johnson & Wales University, paint a mural in a hallway at Mount Pleasant High School yesterday, one of several projects at the school.

The Providence Journal / Mary Murphy

PROVIDENCE — Mike Raposa, a 1974 graduate of Mount Pleasant High School, returned to his alma mater yesterday morning to add a little luster to the dilapidated high school.

Raposa was one of 65 employees of The Home Depot who spent the day replacing doorknobs, painting lockers and generally sprucing up the aging brick high school, a throwback to an era when high schools were neighborhood hubs.

“We’re here to get the school back on track,” said Raposa, who is 52 and lives in Warwick.

“I want to let students know that they can be dream-makers, not dream-breakers.”

City Year invited volunteers from the city’s schools, The Home Depot, T-Mobile, Brown University and Youth Build to work on the massive, three-story brick building in Mount Pleasant. Among the volunteer work force were 100 middle school students and members of Young Heroes, a community service program run by City Year. They were joined by 300 families and other members of the community.

Students planned to spend the day painting a mural to grace the front entrance of the school and include quotes from famous activists such as Rosa Parks and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Volunteers spread out through the school to do various jobs. Some painted the railings along the stairs gray. Scores of volunteers went to two floors of the high school to give tired-looking lockers a fresh coat of light blue paint. One group helped to paint two murals in the gym. Other volunteers painted the walls in the corridors and at the entrance of the school with quotes from famous people, from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to musician Carlos Santana.

Anthony Rich, 15, a Mount Pleasant High student who volunteered to paint, said he was delighted so many people volunteered to work on his school because it could use some sprucing up. “We need a better environment to learn. I don’t want to see broken-down stuff,” Rich said. Mount Pleasant student Anaclariza Rivera, 14, said she signed up to paint to make the school better. “I’m showing people I’m not afraid to make a difference. All it takes is one person,” she said.

Chijioge Nwogu, 20, an economics student at Brown University, stood in the corridor on the first floor of the school with other volunteers meticulously applying paint to a locker. He had volunteered along with about 35 peer leaders from the university. They had seen the call for volunteers on the Internet and signed up.

“You do your small part. People should help out more often even if it’s a small thing,” he said. Nwogu said there was excitement in the air among the students volunteering on Martin Luther King Day and with today’s inauguration of Barack Obama. “It means a lot to have a figure of hope. You have to step back and look at the bigger picture. Obama is just a man. He is not God. He is doing his own part. We have to do our own part. Hope alone can’t make change; it takes action.”

Jesus Isasis, of Cumberland, who works in customer relations for T-Mobile, volunteered with about 20 people from his company. His 9-year-old daughter, Veronica, was helping him paint the lockers in the corridor. Isasis said this was the first time he volunteered but not his last. With the new president there seemed to be a new willingness to pitch in, he said, for people to do their part to help. He said he would record the inauguration so that after work, his wife and friends could put on their Obama T-shirts and gather at a friend’s house to watch.

Samantha Steinberg, one of the event’s organizers, said that City Year picked Mount Pleasant because the organization routinely works in the city’s schools and wanted to show its support for the school district.

“We want to show that the community cares,” she said, “that there is a reason for them to come to school every day.”

During an opening ceremony, Bernie Beaudreau, executive director of Serve Rhode Island, told students that it is important for “each of us to add our seeming insignificance to the sum of everyone’s efforts.”

“On this day of ‘Yes We Can,’ perhaps Dr. King is looking down on us at a world where there is incredible new energy and hope,” Beaudreau said. Despite the ruinous economy, “We will prevail.”

“Look around you,” said Providence School Supt. Tom Brady. “What do we celebrate today?”

King’s message was “I have a dream,” Brady said, “But his message was also about community. We have the beginnings of that right here. Today is a call to community, a call to make things better.”

tpina@projo.com