As my term of service draws to an end, I reflect on what an amazing opportunity it has been to serve with Care Force this past year. I have met different types of people from across the country who are passionate, hardworking, and care about the world they live in and the people around them. I have gotten to know and worked with exceptional organizations and corporations that are dedicated to making change. ARAMARK and The Miami Rescue Mission are two of these groups, and have been working together since 2008 continuing to build and better communities through their work.
Since 1922 the Miami Rescue Mission has served men, women and children of Miami, with the hope that one day “no one is homeless.” They provide food, shelter, clothing, education, job training, spiritual direction and long-term rehabilitation programs. A remarkable organization, the service event held there on May 3rd, 2012 held special meaning for ARAMARK, who would be serving at the Miami Rescue Mission for a second time. ARAMARK volunteers would have the opportunity to increase their impact and strengthen their four year-long partnership with the Mission after their first event in November of 2008.
On April 30th, my teammate Ashley Hackett, our Project Manager Hugh Harlow and I arrived at the Miami Rescue Mission. We were greeted with thanks by Tony, the Director at the Mission’s Center for Men, before we had even unloaded our car. Prepping that week at the Miami Rescue Mission I got to know the men that that lived there and experience their day to day schedule as we taped and tarped the floors around them. Men from the mission worked alongside us throughout the whole week, and the team that helped us from City Year Miami did a great job working to complete all of the intense prep work for the event. This included taking down over 300 dusty and crumbling ceiling tiles and ripping up an old carpet that the ARAMARK volunteers would replace. Together we prepped in the pouring rain and in the humid Miami heat. By Wednesday we were all quite sore, but our tools were sorted, over 45 gallons of paint and wood kits for construction had been distributed, and the event day was almost upon us.
As a bus captain, on the morning of Thursday May 3th, I met ARAMARK at the Miami Towers and took the bus over to the Miami Rescue Mission with them. On the ride over to the Miami Rescue Mission I shared with the volunteers about City Year and our organization, and the history of the Miami Rescue Mission. Arriving at the mission, we had the opportunity to hear from two men about how the Miami Rescue Mission had turned their lives around. Together that day, the ARAMARK volunteers repainted the cafeteria, clinic, and recreation room, replaced hundreds of ceiling tiles and laid hundreds of carpet tiles. Picnic Tables, benches, and bookcases were built by ARAMARK volunteers working alongside community members and men from the mission’s program. Over 200 bags of mulch were spread to beautify the mission’s entry ways. Everything we had planned for that day finished on time, and the day was a great success.
All of the volunteers on my project were eager to serve, hardworking, and excited to meet the people working alongside them. Without the dedication and support of companies like ARAMARK and the community volunteerism they inspire, places like The Miami Rescue Mission would not have the resources it needs to serve the hundreds of people it helps every day. Getting to know and appreciate the Miami Rescue Mission and meeting many of the hard working volunteers that served with us that day… It is events like that at the Miami Rescue Mission with ARAMARK that have made this the amazing and irreplaceable year it has been.
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