THE HOME DEPOT DAY OF SERVICE MAKES AN IMPACT

THROUGH SHARED EXPERIENCES, WE OFFER COMMUNITY PARTNERS AN EXPANDED WAY TO CONNECT WITH YOUTH VILLAGES

At Youth Villages Georgia, we are aware that it takes a village to accomplish our mission of helping children and families live successfully. Our community partners help us in several ways to carry out that mission, and we are grateful to be in collaboration to support the youth in our care.

A fantastic example of community engagement is how our friends from The Home Depot gave back to our Inner Harbour campus. Last December, volunteers from The Home Depot held their TEAM DEPOT event with us. After several months of coordination and thoughtful planning, we welcomed more than 100 volunteers to our Inner Harbour campus to complete much needed renovation and restoration projects to beautify our campus.

Volunteers spent time in five different areas on our 1,200-acre campus: the labyrinth, community garden, dog kennels, chessboard and horse barn. From debris clean-up and repainting rocks at the labyrinth to mulching dog kennels to repainting the chessboard, Home Depot volunteers gave their time and energy to revitalize these areas. In the community garden, they repurposed garden beds and rebuilt new ones for our upcoming spring planting. They weeded and mulched the garden, replaced the fencing around the edge of the garden and spruced up the fairy garden area too! At the horse barn, they built a new staircase, put in a drainage pipe, built a new stall, cleared a pathway and riding ring, painted a mural, painted a picnic table and created a barn quilt!

(From left to right) Ryan Shaffer, Amy Mock, Kristin McNeil and Eric Ritter were the amazing team leaders who created, coordinated and executed the The Team Depot event with Youth Villages.

The level of planning to execute this project was only surpassed by the amount of heart each of the volunteers brought to give back to Youth Villages. A very special thank you to Kristin McNeil, Amy Mock, Eric Ritter and Ryan Shaffer, who were the backbone of this day’s success through their direction and leadership. After a couple of years of being unable to gather in person, this day of service was a reminder of the enormous impact of giving back.

This year, Youth Villages is expanding engagement efforts for our community partners. We can offer companies and organizations a quarterly engagement opportunity, including a presentation about Youth Villages and a self-care training for your employees or group, a half- or full-day service project on the Inner Harbour campus for team building and giving back, along with creating peer-to-peer or in-kind drives to support Backpack Heroes and Holiday Heroes.

Please reach out to Community Engagement Manager Kimmy Yon at kimmy.yon@ youthvillages.org if you are interested in becoming a community partner.