HandsOn Northeast Georgia Blog

The day of the project, at The Tree House in Winder, started out extremely cold. The delivered topsoil was even frozen! Jeff, my co-Hands On AmeriCorps member, and I decided, that once the work began everyone would warm up. We were expecting 13 volunteers but, to our surprise, 29 showed up! This was going to make the rock removal portion of the tasks, we had planned, go much better. We could work in shifts and rotate people around so the ‘shovel’ work would be spread (no pun intended) around. The volunteers included representatives of three Cub Scout Dens, two MBA students at UGA, a North Georgia Tech. college student, nine Boys and Girls Club of Winder middle school students and their adult leaders, an employee of The Tree House and her family, four members of the Barrow County CERT, and other individual, Barrow County residents. As the day progressed, the day grew slightly warmer and everyone was ‘warming’ (pun intended, this time) to their tasks. A reporter from The Barrow County News came, interviewed various people, and took photos. Lunch was provided, at a reduced rate, by Sonic. Even the topsoil and mulch were provided and delivered by Home Depot, at a reduced rate. At the close of the project, all that came and worked had a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction about the work done. The Tree House Director and Jeff and I thanked everyone for their hard work and participation. Jeff and I reminded them to check the Hands On website for future projects. We collected all the tools, made sure the site was clean, and left, secure in the knowledge, that Hands On AmeriCorps and some great MLK volunteers had made a safer place to play, to just be kids, for children going through a terrible time in their life.