Today I volunteered with the RIT Young Professionals group for the United Way Day of Caring. We teamed up with some U of R Young Leaders to help out the Westside YMCA on Elmgrove Rd. We weeded, planted flowers, spread mulch in all the gardens and around all the trees, and also added new wood chips to the playground. It may not sound like a lot (and I'll admit, we totally thought we would get done early), but it took us ALL DAY! Granted, U of R had a few volunteers drop out so we had about 4 or 5 fewer people than expected. But we got a LOT done. In retrospect, we should have taken before and after pictures...
Even though it was a ton of work, today was so much fun. (It certainly helped that we had picture perfect weather!) It felt very rewarding in many ways to help out as part of the Day of Caring. So many of the Y's members were gracious and very appreciative of all our work. (Some of the older male members were apparently especially appreciative of my unintentional "show" of putting sun tan lotion on myself... Come on!) At one point all of the young kids came out to thank us for updating their playground, and they handed us hand drawn construction paper Thank You cards (so cute!).
A Young Professionals group is a really great way to get involved in community service - having a team working together can accomplish so much, and it was definitely fun to interact with my peers in a new way. I came away with a lot today, which definitely makes all the hard work worth it. (And I'm sure I'll still feel that way in 2 days when all the shoveling comes back to hurt me.) I hope that we organize more activities like this in the future!
Some pictures from the day...
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| A few of us RIT gals, getting our hands dirty! |
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| RIT Young Professionals - with a much depleted mulch pile (I swear!) |
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| RIT YP with some very appreciative kids :-) PS: That giant umbrella behind us sprays down water - And they turned it on so we could cool off under it! Yeah! |
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