Making a BIG Difference - the AmeriCorps way!

Meadow View Team Report - Christa Fox, AmeriCorps Team Leader

This year for Make a Difference Day, the CalSERVES Meadow View team  partnered with the Volunteer Center of Sonoma County and produced over 50 volunteers to beautify the campus of Helen Lehman Elementary. The projects at hand included organizing the school’s library, repainting lines, numbers and hopscotch squares on the black top, and, the most daunting of tasks, a complete overhaul of the garden!

Amongst the free bagels and coffee, we were greeted in the morning by Helen Lehman’s principal, Beverly Jones. After the initial introduction, our large group dispersed into three smaller groups and started on our projects. It was a beautiful day to be outside painting and gardening!

The amount of student and parent volunteers was very impressive! Entire families arrived with their own tools and went straight to work. Many hands were engrossed in the garden, as it required the most attention. The Meadow View team helped to pull weeds, organize the tool shed, and lay cardboard, compost and mulch. Needless to say, there was a lot of shoveling involved!

The painting committee revamped the entire blacktop to appear brand new! Paint was reapplied on benches, hopscotch squares, basketball hoop backboards, perimeter lines, etc. Once again, the blacktop has been restored to a wonderful place for students to play.

The overall atmosphere at Helen Lehman was incredibly positive! Thank you so much to all who came out to lend a hand!

RL Stevens Team Report - Richelle Andre, AmeriCorps VIP Fellow

On Saturday, October 22nd, the R.L. Stevens CalSERVES staff and a handful of fantastic volunteers teamed up for Make a Difference Day. During the course of the morning, we were able to put bark mulch over many of the bare-dirt areas around the school, as well as on the margins of the playground. This bark mulch helps keep weeds down and make the school look great!

We were also able to clean out the school’s garden, which was full of truckloads of old weeds as well as garbage. Everyone worked really hard and had a great attitude the whole time. Thank you to everyone who came out!

Wright Charter Team Report - Stacey  Krywaruczenko, AmeriCorps Team Leader

This past Saturday, I joined the fabulous team at Wright Charter as we picked up trash and pulled weeds at Cook Middle School. These are both things that I have done numerous times at different locations, but there is just something very special about completing these tasks with people that I see everyday, with whom I know that I am already making a difference.

I mostly picked up trash around the school and conversed with my team members, one in particular that I didn’t even know very well, but through this experience I was able to get to know her at a different level. We had some good laughs, not just from our conversations, but also by some of the strange things that we found all throughout Cook. While doing all of these things, there were also members of the community who were practicing their favorite sport, or watching a soccer game.

Seeing the community interact in that manner allowed me to feel a sense of accomplishment. Through our actions of beautifying Cook Middle School, it is now a place where not only just the students can enjoy themselves, but the community can as well.