Day of Caring

On Thursday, Sept. 11th I got to be a part of the United Way's Day of Caring event. I was actually the staff person in charge of the project that the Women's Leadership Council did (I'm the Administrative Assistant to the Director of this group). We were assigned to work with the Daily Herald (our local newspaper) and BYU.

For those of you who don't know what the Day of Caring is, it is where companies allow their employees to take the morning off to volunteer in their community. The United Way coordinates all of the volunteers and assigns them to projects across the community.

Our group was assigned to Provost Elementary. We had several groups of volunteers working in various classrooms reading stories and doing activities with the students that went along with those stories. We also had volunteers working outside painting outside games for the students and freshening up older outside games.

Although I felt a little chaotic running from place to place around that school and coordinating all of their efforts, I believe all of the volunteers had a wonderful experience! I got really nice emails afterwards from the Daily Herald and from the Provost Elementary Principal that thanked me for everything and mentioned what a wonderful morning it was. I think for my first event it turned out well! I, of course, couldn't have done it without the help of my boss, the other Administrative Assistant (the lady I job share with), and the amazing volunteers including the women of the Women's Leadership Council. It's such a good feeling to be a part of something so amazing!

Painting an alphabet caterpillar

Painting the US map

Digging weeds out of the cracks

This is my favorite picture! During recess several of the kids sat down around the volunteers and watched and asked them questions (it was pajama day at school).

The finished product

Reading to the children

The finished product

We had two alphabet caterpillars to freshen up and one new one to paint. We had one US map to freshen up and one new one to paint. There were also like six to eight hopscotches to freshen up and one really big shape circle to freshen up. Inside we had seven groups of volunteers visiting seven different classrooms the first hour and then an additional seven classrooms the second hour. Needless to say, there was a lot going on! What a fun morning.