As I mentioned in my previous post, Tom and I helped with a community service project on Saturday. We were up bright and early (I was up earlier than Tom as I was able to fit in a 5 mile run while he was sleeping) and ready to get to work! We met up with the rest of the Panera team at 830 AM to then meet up with ServeCobb and ServeATL at the Vinings Home Depot to learn more about the ServeCobb organization and what our project was going to be. After a brief introduction, we found out our location and what we were going to be doing- cleaning up a stretch of road in Austell, GA that fell victim to the flooding in September 2009. Upon learning our assignment and talking with the site leader, we set off to our location to get started!
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| ServeCobb Organization |
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| More than 250+ volunteers throughout the city of Atlanta and Cobb County to help this past weekend |
After making the 15-20 minute drive, we spoke with another volunteer organization at our site, got our gloves and another volunteer tshirt, and set to work. Yes, it was hot. Yes, there were bugs. Yes, there was debris EVERYWHERE. But. We worked together as a team and with strangers to clean up this location that had been completely demolished by the floods of 2009. When we started at the beginning of the road, a lot of the debris had already been gathered by the other volunteer organization and brought to larger piles so the guys with the Caterpillars could then scoop up the pile and deposit it in the dumpsters on site.
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| One of the houses we were cleaning up. Yes, that was once a house. |
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| Tom and his GM after throwing a large chunk of house into the dumpster |
After moving further down, we saw the 2 houses whose foundations had pretty much wiped away by the flood waters. It was devastating to find a child's lunchbox or stuffed animals and toys soiled from the flood. I could only get the clear shot of the house above as the other was set a little farther back and blocked from view. As we were cleaning up, Tom's GM asked me to take a few pictures of everyone so I wandered off to do so and upon returning to Tom, he yelled (politely but yelling was necessary for the distance between us) for me to grab his backpack, that we had to go. I was confused but did as he asked and when I caught up with him, he told me that one of the volunteers spotted what looked like a small meth lab and directed the two cops that were volunteering with us to the area. They quickly confirmed what the volunteer saw and directed all of us out of the area as the rest of the area needed to be searched by a HAZMAT team before work could resume. We were waiting for about half an hour before the site coordinator told us our group could leave as we had finished cleaning the rest of the surrounding area. Our main focus from that point forward was to clean the area right around the houses, but once the small meth lab was found, we were unable to provide any additional help. We felt badly for having to leave, but didn't want to interfere with the police work so we did as we were told and left the area.
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| The Panera team- I took off the green shirt after I realized no one else put theirs on over the blue. Oops |
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| Getting ready to work! |
Overall, it was great to give back to the community albeit briefly in my opinion. But we're hoping to get more volunteer projects in the future. I hate that our community service project was cut short, but there wasn't anything we could do about it. I'm looking into more volunteer opportunities and ways to get involved around the community so if anyone has any advice or organizations in need, I'd appreciate any feedback!!
The rest of our weekend was pretty low key: laying poolside with Fifty Shades, running, grocery shopping/errand running, catching up on a few shows, the likes. It was nice to not have anything planned outside of our community service event. I hope everyone else had a great weekend as well!
Happy Reading! Have a great week!
All my love,
Britt!
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