"Day of Service" volunteers for Meals on Wheels.
For immediate release — March 9, 2012
(DALLAS) — On Friday, March 2, an army of 1,000 volunteers — all employees of the Dallas County Community College District — fanned out across Dallas County to lend their hands and hearts to agencies that needed their help with community service projects. DCCCD’s “Day of Service,” a daylong effort to give back to the community, celebrates its second year of volunteer efforts.
Twenty-two nonprofit Dallas agencies put volunteers to work. They helped senior citizens with daily activities, worked on habitat/landscaping projects, sorted donated items, worked in classrooms as teacher’s assistants, gardened, delivered meals, sorted food, cleaned, washed laundry and dishes, picked up trash and performed whatever tasks were needed to help others. DCCCD volunteers worked a full day at their locations to give back to the community.
"Day of Service" volunteers sort donated items.
Head Start of Greater Dallas, for example, has a center on the campus of Brookhaven College, where 41 DCCCD employees volunteered to work that day; a total of 106 registered to work in Head Start locations across Dallas County. Andress Koenning, spokesperson for Head Start of Greater Dallas, said, “Each volunteer hour worked is worth $13.23 toward the centers’ required nonfederal match.” As a result, those 106 registered DCCCD volunteers — each of whom gave a minimum of six hours of service and usually eight hours — represented a donation of approximately $11,000.
Meals on Wheels welcomed 60 volunteers on Friday, more than 80 DCCCD employees worked at both locations of the North Texas Food Bank, and a number of activities also were held on college campuses that day. Several DCCCD District Service Center employees enjoyed their experiences so much that they plan to return to the agencies where they volunteered for additional service to those organizations.
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Press contact: Ann Hatch
214-378-1819;
ahatch@dcccd.edu