University at Buffalo - The State University of New York

Workers pose at Seneca Bluffs park, one of three sites where UB volunteers worked on Day of Caring. Photo: DOUGLAS LEVERE

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  Audio slideshow: UB employees and students volunteered with Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper, Buffalo ReUse and Habitat for Humanity. | View audio slideshow

By CHARLOTTE HSU

Published: August 19, 2009

They weeded a city park, gardened, prepared salvaged building materials to be sold again, and helped renovate a gutted home on Buffalo’s East Side. Armed with shears and shovels, hammers and screwdrivers, many were sweating by the end of the day.

But despite the hard labor, many of about 170 UB volunteers who took part in Wednesday’s Day of Caring reported having fun. They spent the day working for three local non-profit organizations—Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper, Buffalo ReUse and Habitat for Humanity of Buffalo. All three groups are also part of UB’s Community OutReach for Employees(UB CORE) program.

The event, organized by the United Way of Buffalo and Erie County, served as the informal kickoff for UB’s Employee Campaign for the Community, an annual fund-raising drive to raise money for a slew of good causes. The university was one of many participants in the Day of Caring, which draws thousands of volunteers each year.

UB Reporter spent the day following members of the university community who gave their time. Volunteers with Habitat for Humanity were scheduled to work from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper and Buffalo ReUse planned three hours of activities for their UB helpers, lasting from 9 a.m. to noon.

8 a.m.

More than 100 UB employees and students are gathered at HSBC Arena, the meeting location for Day of Caring volunteers. The university has set up tables, framed by blue and silver balloons, where new arrivals can pick up T-shirts and name tags, along with fruit donated by Campus Dining and Shops.

Yellow school buses that will ferry volunteers to work sites leave in half an hour. In the interim, the sound of hundreds of conversations fills the packed arena. Among the voices are those of Veronica Young and Tracy Oun, friends and UB staffers. Both are dressed in jeans and sneakers, with sunglasses hooked to the collar of their T-shirts.

“This is my first year (at Day of Caring), and Veronica recruited me,” says Oun, an administrative assistant for health sciences development. “Since I’ve signed up, she’s been just telling me what a great opportunity it is. UB is always asking for the community’s support. This is our turn to reciprocate, to support them back.”

“It’s just giving back to the community, helping out the community, making the community a better place,” says Young, a secretary in the School of Public Health and Health Professions who has participated in the event twice before.

A few minutes after 8 a.m., Julie Klas, an operations assistant in the Office of the President who co-chaired Day of Caring for UB with Amy Myszka, wellness and work-life balance coordinator in University Human Resources, herds university volunteers together for a group photograph.

9 a.m.

Buses carrying UB volunteers have arrived at Seneca Bluffs, a 15-acre park off Seneca Street in South Buffalo. Representatives of Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper explain the day’s tasks. Split into teams, the UB workers will place mulch around trees and remove weeds, including mugwort. They also will place protective barriers around trees to protect the trunks from gnawing beavers.

Though the section of the park where volunteers are working is not far from the road, the surroundings seem somehow pristine. UB employees carry equipment—shovels, bright orange plastic pails filled with mulch—along a gravel path that cuts through fields of shrubs and tall grasses. The sky is clear except for a few stray clouds. Battling mosquitoes, the volunteers dig and weed—a change from the usual day in the office, to be sure.

Young, who is carrying a pair of shears, strips thick vegetation that has grown up around a tree. A few meters away, Oun is chatting with a fellow volunteer and shoveling dark mulch around the base of a sapling.

10 a.m.

Across town on Northampton Street, another group of UB volunteers is hard at work at Buffalo ReUse, which, among other services, salvages and sells used home-building materials and furnishings. The sounds of hammering and a power screwdriver gush, in spurts, from a room behind Buffalo ReUse’s store, where items ranging from used chairs to doorknobs are showcased.

In the room where the noises are originating, graduate student Amrita Herkal is kneeling, removing metal parts such as screws and hinges from wooden doors that can be reused. She is at the end of a long row of doors—red doors, brown doors, pale blue doors, white doors, sea green doors—that stand, vertical, each stacked against the next.

“This is a chance to be away from my regular schedule and do a bit for society,” says Herkal, a Ph.D. candidate studying biology. “Once the semester starts, it’s so busy and packed. There isn’t much time.”

Outside, volunteers are completing other projects for Buffalo ReUse, such as working in the organization’s garden. Some, including Russ Phillipson, a site representative for UB Facilities, are burying used tires halfway in the ground to form a fence around raised beds of growing vegetables, including zucchini. Phillipson, who grew up on a small farm in Sardinia, is carrying a large shovel.

“I like digging in the dirt,” he says. “And it’s a chance to help out and get to know other people.”

11 a.m.

Sunlight and a slight breeze drift in through screened windows on the second floor of a gutted East Side house that UB volunteers are helping to rehabilitate. A Maxwell House coffee tin filled with nails sits on the floor. Naked light bulbs hang from the ceiling. Some UB employees are sawing beams of wood into small pieces.

Mechelle Lumpkin, program coordinator for UB’s Mini Medical School, is lining a space between a window frame and wall beam with puffy, pink fiberglass insulation. Like some of the other workers, she is wearing a blue face mask—protection from dust floating in the air at the construction site.

One reason she wanted to volunteer with Habitat for Humanity was to develop new skills and learn a bit about the building trade. Her motivation for participating in the Day of Caring was simple, she says: “It’s just doing good, just giving back.”