2014 Day of Service

Happy Friday!! I’m sorry I missed you all on Wednesday, I was in back to meetings almost the entire day and just didn’t have time to write to you guys. But, I have a great little tidbit to share with you all today. So, yesterday was my company’s 6th annual day of service. I have participated each year since this program started and is one of my favorite days of the year. We are given the day (morning, afternoon or both) to sign up and volunteer our time to a local cause. It’s a paid day for us at work (over 1,600 of us!) and allows everyone at my company to get out in the local community and help others. All of the opportunities we volunteer for are aligned to helping people living with a serious disease, science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education or supporting the neighborhoods and local communities surrounding our offices.

I have volunteered at a variety of places over the course of the past 6 years, each one bringing it’s own special sense of satisfaction, this year was no different. I signed up to work from 8:30-12 p.m. at a local elementary school. This school is the largest in the city of Boston with about 800 students, with about half of the students living below the poverty line and a staggering number of the students are homeless. I can’t tell you how much this broke my heart and made me even more determined to help this school. They have this great outdoor educational space that was severely overgrown and was recently vandalized so our job was to clean it up…paint, pull weeds, weed whack, rake, cut trees, sweep the grounds, lay down mulch. Basically, we needed to revive this outdoor space so they kids could actually use it and learn in it.

The morning crew had 30 volunteers and once our bus arrived, we were greeted by the Vice Principle who gave us some background on the school and its students and then we got to work. We divided up into different sections and were off. I paired off with our head of Corporate Communications and we painted a variety of surfaces with chalk board paint so they kids could have lessons outside (that’s us below in the middle picture on the right.) How cool would it be to go outside and learn a lesson? If you notice in the picture I’m in, you see those wood stumps along the fence? They are movable seats for the kids, such a cool idea! The guy on the left laughing and picking up leaves is the Chief Executive Officer and President of our company. All of the executives give their time too and get their hands dirty…0r wear gloves

After a few coats of chalkboard paint, I helped pull weeds, sweep the grounds and primed some planters that needed painting. To say we got A TON done is an understatement. The transformation of the outdoor learning center was staggering. The bottom right picture shows how great the space was turning out. When we first arrived, there was trash all over the ground, everything was overgrown so you couldn’t see through the space, there was spray paint tags all over, it was a mess. It’s amazing what 30 people on a mission can accomplish in such a short time. What is even better is that there were 30 more volunteers coming for an afternoon session to do more work!

As we were working, some of the kids were running around on the playground, very interested in the work we were doing. They were so young, full of energy and sweet. It made me so happy that I had a part in cleaning up a space that they can now explore and learn in. I feel very lucky that my work supports us and allows us on company time to give back–all in all, it was another great day of service at work. I came back to the office feeling refreshed and energized. It’s amazing how helping others can invigorate you!

I hope you all have a great weekend…I’ll see you on Monday