Every year on September 11th we take time to remember those who were lost on September 11th 2001 and AmeriCorps has adopted it as a National Day of service and remembrance. Since September 11 fell on a Saturday AmeriCorps had our service project on September 10th. All over the nation AmeriCorps members worked on various community service programs. Sometimes all the OASHF AmeriCorps members come together for one big service project in central Ohio but not this time. This time we all did service projects in our own area. Since I am the AmeriCorps*VISTA Leader for SW Ohio it was my job to organize a service project for the members in my area. Usually I have a little notice that I have to do these projects but this time I only had 1 week to get one together so I was scrambling to get one that we could all work on.
I manage 13 AmeriCorps*VISTA's so I had to find something that we could all work on together. I remembered while we were in the middle of the Summer Feeding program that one of our agencies was working on a community revitalization project. They had recently acquired an old school or at least one wing of the school the rest of it was torn down. All that was left was a 2 story building and a playground which was perfect for them. The only thing was vandals had broken in and broke windows and spray painted dirty things on the playground equipment. So this made a perfect service project for my VISTA members and me to work on.
I had planned for all of my members to come and work on this one project but as it turned out only 5 showed up others had found other service projects that they wanted to work on in their area which was fine. I'm pretty flexible with things like this but I could of used the extra hands to help.
We arrived at Hamilton Living waters at 9 am and I met with the Executive Director Cathy she handed me a box with a box of rags 2 spray bottles and a roll of garbage bags. I'm thinking ok maybe there isn't that much to it. How wrong I was. We chatted for a bit waiting for some more people to show up to help. While waiting a lady came to the door looking for help with housing. My heart went out to this lady. She had been living at various friends house and in her car with her children. Cathy herself took this woman in even though the office wasn't supposed to open for another couple of hours and took down her name and contact information. There was no sorry you have to come back later or anything like that and I must say I was amazed at the kindness this executive director showed to this poor woman with really nowhere to go.
After the lady left feeling much better than she did when she first arrived a few more VISTA members showed up so we put a sign on the door and walked a block to the building we would be working in. There were large rocks everywhere that people were using to throw at the windows. A door was chained shut and windows were boarded up. The playground was littered with rocks and other trash and the equipment had been spray painted and written on with ugly words. I looked down at the little box of items and knew we were going to need much more than what was there. I had planned a little for this and brought 3 brooms and dustpans from my house along with any work gloves I could find a roll of garbage bags. My daughter Angel came along to help too so there was an extra person.
Cathy told us that people had broken in and they had to install security system and that it was worse inside. So I braced myself for the worst. She let us in and ran to turn off the security system and then we saw what she meant. As soon as we walked in the first door there were chairs stacked in a corner under the stairs as we moved in further there were more chairs in the halls. She then told us we needed to sort the chairs by size and put 50 in each room. She told us to pick up rocks and put them under the stairs because she figured if they didn't have rocks to throw then maybe they wouldn't break anymore windows. Cathy walked us thru the building and informed us as to what to do in each room and put up sticky notes on the doors of how many chairs to put where and the computer room got the chairs with wheels. She let us know that she had meetings to do that day and would try to come back at the end of the day.
I looked around at all the chairs and rocks to pick up a said ok I’m calling in reinforcements and called my son who had a truck. If I was going to pick up all those rocks I might as well get rid of them too. My son Jesse who worked 12 hours third shift grumbled a bit but he showed up with his truck and we loaded it up with rocks. I would of put more in but he said that's it and he had to go especially when he seen me picking up little rocks along with the big ones. I think those rocks are still in the back of his truck ha-ha. So no we didn't pick up every rock that was there but we got most the big ones and some of the small ones.
We worked on the building and playground and playing musical chairs with the million chairs that were there until 4:00 in the afternoon. Some people did a service project for maybe 2 hours but my team worked a full 8 hour work day there and boy were we tired at the end of the day. But we were all happy to be doing some kind of direct service and it really felt like we made a difference that day.
I'm very proud of all of the AmeriCorps members for all of their hard work and I want to say a big THANK YOU to all of them!
I manage 13 AmeriCorps*VISTA's so I had to find something that we could all work on together. I remembered while we were in the middle of the Summer Feeding program that one of our agencies was working on a community revitalization project. They had recently acquired an old school or at least one wing of the school the rest of it was torn down. All that was left was a 2 story building and a playground which was perfect for them. The only thing was vandals had broken in and broke windows and spray painted dirty things on the playground equipment. So this made a perfect service project for my VISTA members and me to work on.
I had planned for all of my members to come and work on this one project but as it turned out only 5 showed up others had found other service projects that they wanted to work on in their area which was fine. I'm pretty flexible with things like this but I could of used the extra hands to help.
We arrived at Hamilton Living waters at 9 am and I met with the Executive Director Cathy she handed me a box with a box of rags 2 spray bottles and a roll of garbage bags. I'm thinking ok maybe there isn't that much to it. How wrong I was. We chatted for a bit waiting for some more people to show up to help. While waiting a lady came to the door looking for help with housing. My heart went out to this lady. She had been living at various friends house and in her car with her children. Cathy herself took this woman in even though the office wasn't supposed to open for another couple of hours and took down her name and contact information. There was no sorry you have to come back later or anything like that and I must say I was amazed at the kindness this executive director showed to this poor woman with really nowhere to go.
After the lady left feeling much better than she did when she first arrived a few more VISTA members showed up so we put a sign on the door and walked a block to the building we would be working in. There were large rocks everywhere that people were using to throw at the windows. A door was chained shut and windows were boarded up. The playground was littered with rocks and other trash and the equipment had been spray painted and written on with ugly words. I looked down at the little box of items and knew we were going to need much more than what was there. I had planned a little for this and brought 3 brooms and dustpans from my house along with any work gloves I could find a roll of garbage bags. My daughter Angel came along to help too so there was an extra person.
Cathy told us that people had broken in and they had to install security system and that it was worse inside. So I braced myself for the worst. She let us in and ran to turn off the security system and then we saw what she meant. As soon as we walked in the first door there were chairs stacked in a corner under the stairs as we moved in further there were more chairs in the halls. She then told us we needed to sort the chairs by size and put 50 in each room. She told us to pick up rocks and put them under the stairs because she figured if they didn't have rocks to throw then maybe they wouldn't break anymore windows. Cathy walked us thru the building and informed us as to what to do in each room and put up sticky notes on the doors of how many chairs to put where and the computer room got the chairs with wheels. She let us know that she had meetings to do that day and would try to come back at the end of the day.
I looked around at all the chairs and rocks to pick up a said ok I’m calling in reinforcements and called my son who had a truck. If I was going to pick up all those rocks I might as well get rid of them too. My son Jesse who worked 12 hours third shift grumbled a bit but he showed up with his truck and we loaded it up with rocks. I would of put more in but he said that's it and he had to go especially when he seen me picking up little rocks along with the big ones. I think those rocks are still in the back of his truck ha-ha. So no we didn't pick up every rock that was there but we got most the big ones and some of the small ones.
We worked on the building and playground and playing musical chairs with the million chairs that were there until 4:00 in the afternoon. Some people did a service project for maybe 2 hours but my team worked a full 8 hour work day there and boy were we tired at the end of the day. But we were all happy to be doing some kind of direct service and it really felt like we made a difference that day.
I'm very proud of all of the AmeriCorps members for all of their hard work and I want to say a big THANK YOU to all of them!
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