In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. and his concept of the beloved community Steve and I participated in a MLK Community Service Project sponsored by the Decatur Preservation Alliance and City of Decatur. The event takes place the entire three day weekend. I am not certain of the number of volunteers this year, but in 2008 it was 800.
Steve and I were yard captains on Saturday. The yard captains lead the volunteers in invasive plant removal and various types of yard clean up.
My morning began around 8am as I dressed for the 18F morning that promised to warm up to 35F. I dropped off the dogs at Rex and Roxy's and headed to our community center. While the event is extremely well organized your first impression is that it is chaos.
My volunteer group was about 15 people from a newly formed church in the area. To my surprise the pastor was the owner of Gather Grounds, home to what I believe is the best latte in Atlanta. This motivated group cleaned vines, destroyed kudzu, chopped down privet trees and shrubs and generally cleaned up the yards of two home owners. I will try to get out today and photograph the pile of rubble left from our work. The City of Decatur will pick up the rubble sometime today.
I was also fortunate to have had a volunteer not affiliated with the group tag along. His name was Rodney. He lives in our neighborhood and is somewhere between being homeless and not being homeless. He works as a day laborer around the neighborhood and I have seen him at the coffee shop. He worked very, very hard and was pleased to receive food as his reward. At the end of his shift (9am - 1pm) he chose to stay with me a bag yard waste at one of the houses. We filled 30 bags. Throughout the day I was able to learn about the man that Rodney use to be before drug addiction left him with mental dysfunction. I left him at 2:30pm but I know I will see him again around the coffee shop.
After dropping off Rodney, I found Steve with his volunteer group. His group and the shift before him had cleared a huge fallen tree in the backyard. The yard was a mess with the damage from the tree and general need for care. Steve's group were young anesthesiology students from Emory. They had great energy and comradeship. It was great working with them and listening to their banter. They were very curious about the origin of our weekend and details regarding how we chose the recipients of the services. I feel quite certain they will be back.
I am also pleased that as a member of the Community Involvement committee with the Associated Building Contractors I was able to get them involved with this project. Our committee chose to sponsor three houses. I was amazed at the generosity of general contractors and subcontractors in providing material and services for the various projects. It was a bit rough around the edges on this new project, but next year should be better.
The MLK Service Project is one of my favorite volunteer opportunities. The elderly being assisted are so grateful for the help and you get to see the finished product of what will make their lives safer and more enjoyable.
2 comments:
My favorite part was when the group I was working with unearthed an in-tact chrome car bumper, clearly from an early 70's VW Beetle - it was in pretty good shape! The group all gathered around and posed with it for a picture (I wish I had a copy of it).
It occurred to me that this group of grad students is surely younger than the bumper.
I concur, Gathering Grounds has the best latte and by far the best iced latte. I knew she was a pastor because I arrived moments after they closed one Sunday and they were preparing to celebrate mass. She invited me to join them but when I determined there would be no lattes involved (I wondered if a holy latte might taste even better) I opted to head back to Karvana to feed my monkey.
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