By Katie Venetsky, corps member serving on the Boston Civic Engagement Team
Friday, November 19th, though not the actual day of Thanksgiving, was the perfect day to hold City Year Boston’s annual Thanksgiving Service day at Headquarters and all around the city of Boston. Thanks to the creative minds of Ashley Hackett, Angeline Capre, Michael Greenberg and myself, Katie Venetsky, just four out of the six members of the Foundation To Be Named Later/John W. Henry Family Foundation Boston Civic Engagement Team, we found the sites, came up with the projects, and put to work 140 corps members and over 200 Corporate and community volunteers!
And the day couldn’t have gone any better! With Ashley and Ange sending corps members to sites like the Smiles pre-school, the Eliot School and the Elizabeth Peabody House, corps members set out to rake leaves, organize food pantries, paint rooms and even do field days with hundreds of elementary school students with an organization called Fit Kidz. Back in Headquarters, Michael and I planned nine projects that our Corporate sponsors [thank you Harvard Gives, Westfield Capital Management, Bain Capital, Bain & Company, National Grid, Johnson & Johnson and Harvard Pilgrim!!] and community members could take part in. This included making over 150 apple pies for the Pine Street Inn, decorating over 150 sustainable tote bags for Urban Edge, 180 toiletry care package for the Friday Night Supper Program, 160 scarves for Rosie’s place, 50 blankets for Horizons for Homeless Children, painting a bin full of wooden building blocks, and decorating 100 backpacks for Elizabeth Peabody House and the East Boston Head Start. Whew! With a roaring “fire” playing on repeat on the computer and classic rock playing on Pandora,
over 200 volunteers circulated through the Lavine Civic Forum and completed these projects that will serve over 800 people.
Overall, the day was amazing! Thank you to all of our corps members that served as project coordinators and all of the volunteers that came out to help! The day definitely couldn’t have been so successful without any of you! Have an amazing Thanksgiving!
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This was an excellent service day! Our whole team had fun working with community volunteers, CYB corps members, and of course doing service!