Day of Caring 2012
Every year around this time we welcome a host of community volunteers to the sanctuary to help with a variety of back-burner tasks that we never seem to get around to and take advantage of the (marginally) cooler fall weather to do a bit of planting.
It’s all part of the Day of Caring, an annual volunteer blitz that is coordinated by United Way agencies across the country. Our own Trident United Way’s Day of Caring tradition began with 17 projects and some 185 volunteers in the year 2000 and has by now become a simply enormous one-day mobilization of goodwill. According to local news sources, on this year’s Day of Caring regional charities benefited on the contributions of 8,000 volunteers who participated in nearly 400 projects across the South Carolina Lowcountry.
Go, Team Hagemeyer!
IPPL has been participating in this event since 2004, and we’ve always had great experiences with our volunteers. Today we welcomed teams from Hagemeyer, Charleston Water System, and the University School of the Lowcountry, all of whom arrived at IPPL for return volunteer engagements.
They painted pump houses…
The kids wanted to know: “How old do you have to be to volunteer at IPPL?” (Answer: Usually 18, but today’s special.)
…and built fences.
Staff member Hardy Brown and a couple of handy guys from Hagemeyer get all manly with the power tools.
They planted bamboo…
This clumping bamboo will make a great visual barrier without being too invasive.
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…and power-washed away the cobwebs.
Sorry, spiders….
They whacked weeds…
Despite what it looks like, our volunteers whacked only the weeds, not the flowers!
…and picked grapes.
Our gibbons adore the scuppernong grapes that ripen on our property every fall.
They were great!
And they got it all done by 2:37, which was when it started to rain….
A view from the back porch today, 2:47 PM.