The Marshall is one of the largest elementary schools in the Boston area with around 700 students.  Located in the heart of Dorchester, the surrounding neighborhood has been rocked by recent violence but continues to rally around its community spaces.  Though there isn’t a City Year team stationed at the school, it’s has become one of Boston Civic Engagement’s favorite schools to work in.  There are been physical service days at the Marshall for the past couple years and the BCE team had the opportunity to return to the school again this year to continue the transformation that was started by previous BCE teams.

City Year partnered with Proctor & Gamble(P&G) to send close to 100 volunteers, including P&G employees and City Year senior corps members, to repaint a mural in the cafeteria, revitalize their peace garden, and paint a large-scale mural in the gym.  We removed the old, broken benches and built new mural benches for the peace garden. We painted a sports themed mural in the gym that included the school motto.

The volunteers from P&G and City Year transformed the gym, peace garden, and cafeteria, which was an excellent continuation of the work done before us. But our work is never done, and the BCE team would return to the Marshall in just a few weeks to transform playgrounds, entrances, and many more areas at the Marshall Elementary School. 

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