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UB branches out at Day of Caring
April Whitehead (blonde hair) is welcomed by manufacturing workers at the Olmsted Center for Sight. Whitehead and other UB volunteers helped the center’s employees assemble key chains and organize files as part of their day of service. Photo: STEVE MORSE
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UB Cares
UB pitches in to serve the community. | Watch the UB team in action
Inside the sleek education auditorium of the Olmsted Center for Sight in downtown Buffalo, two busloads of UB volunteers gather for a day of community service. Each volunteer sports a white T-shirt with a blue UB logo on the back, the words “Live United: I don’t just wear the shirt, I live it” on the front.
Aug. 18 happens to have been the 18th annual Day of Caring, Western New York’s largest community service event organized by the United Way of Buffalo and Erie County. Around 175 volunteers from UB signed up to perform interior and exterior painting, landscaping, cleaning and clearing pathways at 10 sites: three at the Olmsted Center for Sight and its adjacent partner, UB’s Ross Eye Institute; Cornerstone Manor (a shelter for women and children); Compass House (a safe house for homeless and runaway teens); the International Institute of Buffalo (immigrant services); two apartment buildings for visually impaired residents run by the Olmsted Center; the Bristol Home (an assisted-living facility for elderly women) and a Habitat for Humanity home construction project in University Heights.
On the second floor of the Olmsted Center, UB volunteers meet people with various levels of sight employed in the manufacturing facility, where they do an amazing array of skilled and unskilled jobs contracted through the federal government: sewing reflective tape onto bright orange vests (for the Department of Transportation and New York Thruway Authority), expertly hemming sheets used in local hospitals, sewing American flags, packing boxes and other production and packaging work.
A second volunteer group is outside the center, staining a new perimeter fence. By 9:30 a.m., Kathy Garcia has rolled up her sleeves and made her way down several feet of fencing, pausing only to dip her roller into the dark brown liquid. “I like painting—I just painted my own house earlier this summer,” says Garcia, a Cheektowaga resident who works in University Facilities. A third group hits the streets, armed with maps as they spot crumbling sidewalks, heaving curbs, fading street crossings and other hazards. By the end of the day, they will have compiled a list of repairs that the City of Buffalo has promised to fix in order to improve safety for visually and physically impaired citizens.
“When I got here this morning, I was amazed to find people set up painting,” says Earl Reimer, Olmsted’s manufacturing floor manager, referring to the fence-staining team. “I think it’s terrific—it really opens volunteer’s eyes, so to speak.” Reimer shows Michelle Lumpkin, coordinator for UB’s mini-medical school program, how to collate quality-assurance reports, while April Whitehead, assistant to the dean of the School of Public Health and Health Professions, helps Olmsted employee Sandra Clendening assemble key chains.
Clendening, who was a bus driver before she went blind 20 years ago, shows Whitehead her secret method for attaching two plastic parts of the key chain: a butter knife. “I use it at home on the weekends, too,” she quips.
According to the United Way, around 4,000 Day of Caring volunteers donated 14,375 hours of service last year, saving agencies in Erie and Niagara counties nearly $300,000.
“I think UB should be able to get more than 175 volunteers to sign up,” says Cherie Williams, human resources officer for the UB Libraries. She and several colleagues spent the morning painting wainscoting and windows at Compass House, elbow-to-elbow with some of the teenage residents. “It’s a great way to get the inside story on these agencies—to see all the amazing work they do and meet new people,” she adds.
“We just love UB because we don’t have the manpower to get these jobs done, and it’s desperately needed,” says Lisa Freeman, Compass House assistant executive director. She says that UB Facilities donated all the supplies except the paint. “They offered, but we’d already bought it.”
According to Amy Myszka, who coordinates UB’s Day of Caring efforts and its on-campus Wellness and Work/Life Balance programs, the number of registrants was on par with previous years, but UB has made some changes to improve participation and serve new communities. For the first time, she says, registration was expanded to include students, alumni and members of REV UP, UB’s service group for retired employees. And the downtown medical corridor, including Main Street and several East Side neighborhoods, will become a new hub for service teams.
Day of Caring serves as an informal launch of UB’s Campaign for the Community, held every fall. For more information on volunteering for community service events, click here.
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