These are the busy, bustling weekends when all the Valleys nonprofit groups scramble to hold their fund-raisers and outdoor activities when the temperatures are still tolerable. On any Saturday or Sunday, dozens of worthy causes are staged all competing for our time and financial support. Until late May, theyll be rabidly beckoning people to come share their fun for noble reasons.
Those who embrace any groups, movements or projects whether its breast cancer, workers justice, self-sufficiency for the poor or disabilities cannot avoid getting asked out into the sunshine to help and learn. The faith community is right in there, too, with its many projects, outreaches and fund-raisers.
I took in two of them on Saturday and could have been to more events. One was the Local to Global Justice Teach-in at Arizona State University where dozens of progressive groups came together to raise consciousness and share in human development work. Volunteers passions and activism were fierce as they sought to attract more from the public, or each others groups, to share in their mission to address some injustice.
Earlier on Saturday, I spent almost six hours painting an old school with Tempe Cares, sponsored by Tempe Leadership. (I once served six years on Tempe Leaderships board, five as its secretary). About 220 volunteers from nearly two dozen organizations, schools, city departments and corporations gathered at old Mitchell Elementary School near downtown Tempe for mass exterior painting of the school, which opened in 1957 as Tempes second elementary after Scales. But it was closed as a school in 1987 and most recently was used by a batch of Arizona State University departments.
Now the 50-year-old, L-shaped building will house Childsplay, Tempes nationally respected children theater, founded by David Saar in 1977. The campus is being called the Sybil B. Harrington Campus for Imagination and Wonder at Mitchell Park.
With bright, bold and unconventional colors, we painted window frames, walls and walkway ceilings of the 35,000-square feet school. It will cost more than $4 million to develop the campus for Childsplay. Joanie Flatt, Childsplay board president, made her rounds of our project on Saturday, thanking each individual for volunteering.
Tempe Cares had a second, but smaller, team working on landscaping Saturday at Kiwanis Park. Since 1991, Tempe Cares has turned loose volunteers on neighborhoods. For many years, homes in a concentrated neighborhood were targeted for free painting, repairs, yard improvements, new smoke alarms and typically recognized the chance to get facelifts for their houses and welcomed the team of volunteers. In recent years, it has been tougher to recruit a neighborhood for the one-day spring project. Thats partly because of the number of rental homes that often need rehabilitation. Tempe Cares has chosen not to fix up renal homes because absentee homeowners often default on their own responsibility to maintain those properties.
At Mitchell School, each organization was given a segment of the building to paint. My own Tempe Kiwanis Club was assigned a stretch next to that of volunteers for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR. More than a dozen young Muslims assiduously painted beside us and with us. I reconnected with some who have been helpful in past stories about the Islamic community. And I met a woman from
Jordan who is working on her doctorate in physics at ASU and listened to her talk about her studies and future plans.
By 1:30 p.m., the volunteers were largely done and had headed home and to other weekend events. We got free breakfast, lunch and T-shirts out of the deal.
In these delicious 75-degree days of spring in Arizona, take the opportunity to get out to the events that nonprofit groups are holding and volunteer where you can. It underscores how much can be done in a few hours by a lot of helping hands.
