City of Decatur Volunteer Coordinator, Lee Ann Harvey, sent this over to everyone at the City yesterday and I wanted to share it with our readers:
We entered the week leading into the 2011 Martin Luther King Jr. Service Project with much trepidation following the snow and ice event that had virtually brought the metropolitan area to a standstill. On Saturday morning, ice still covered the streets, sidewalks and parking lots and ice-coated snow blanketed yards. We were concerned whether we would have enough volunteers to make repairs at the homes. If yard work volunteers came, we wondered if they would even be able to rake and to do other yard work. Thankfully, the weather began looking up. On Saturday, a small army of volunteers went to homes to make repairs. Other volunteers who had come to rake yards worked instead to remove snow and ice from walkways and ramps at senior citizens’ home. By Sunday and Monday, the project was back on track. A miracle occurred in Decatur. A total of 1,234 volunteers came over the three-day project and many of them worked multiple shifts throughout the weekend. Unbelievably, this was slightly more volunteers than there were last year. Even more unbelievably, we were able to surpass the number of homes worked on last year. This year, we did repairs on a total of 16 homes. Yard work was done on these homes plus another 48 homes. This brought us to a record number of 64 senior citizens’ homes that were worked on by volunteers!