City Reach Volunteers Help with Calderwood Elementary School Project: Phoenix, AZ

City Reach volunteers from Compass Church donated their time on Saturday March 13, 2010 to a community wide project. The project involved over 200 volunteers working over 48 hours to transform five portable classrooms and the grounds surrounding the buildings at Calderwood Elementary School in Phoenix, Arizona.

Calderwood School is located in the Pendergast School District. The district serves over 10,000 Kindergarten through eighth grade students in the Phoenix, Avondale and Glendale communities. Calderwood provides alternative education for about 75 students. The portables which housed these students were in need of some major renovations and that is where the volunteers stepped in.

Volunteers from City Reach along with additional church groups, professionals, school staff and many others contributed their time, tools, materials, skills and enthusiasm for the project during the weekend of March 12-14, 2010. Work included tearing out old carpet, installing new carpeting, patching walls, painting, general cleaning, installing new cabinetry, constructing new office areas and creating two new garden areas located between the portables. It is reported that almost $200,000 in labor, donated equipment, and discounted materials such as library books and physical education equipment went into this project. The goal was to have the project completed by the time the children returned to school after Spring Break, this goal was reached thanks to the many volunteers.

The project was well organized, when a volunteer showed up at the school, they signed in and were asked what skills they had and immediately they were put to work. My family and I are members of the community outreach group "City Reach". Shortly after arrival at the Calderwood project I had a paint brush in hand and my daughter was scraping glue off the floor in the first portable classroom. My husband who is a drywall contractor was patching holes in portable number six. Superb organizational skills by the leaders of the venture assisted to the quick completion of the project.

While working I was thinking how excited the kids would be when they came back to school and saw their classrooms transformed into inviting place to learn and grow. That is what volunteering in your community is all about, encouraging others to find success. Volunteering also has an extra advantage, it aides the volunteer to have compassion for others.

City Reach community outreach is a group of volunteers affiliated with Compass Church in Goodyear, Arizona. The group's mission is to reach out to their community with the Love of Jesus Christ and to serve those in need. City Reach has projects planned throughout the year. Some of the past projects have included; supplying clothes and food to the homeless, neighborhood clean up, visiting with people in local re-habilitation centers and nursing homes and the recent Calderwood Project.

Source:http://www.azcentral.com/community/swvalley/articles