A Hands-On Approach To Fixing Up the Schools

Mark Van DeWege (1300 Emerald St. NE) spoke to Marc Borbely (536 13th St. NE) about his experience last week volunteering with Hands on DC (http://www.handsondc.org).

We had approximately 2,500 volunteers from around the city that spent Saturday improving schools around the District. My group worked at Garrison Elementary, in Northwest. We painted five or six classrooms, did some landscaping outside — just so that when the kids come back to school, things are a little nicer for them.

That's great.

We did it for elementary schools, junior high, high schools. It was really cool to see a lot of people turn out to help the schools around here. We all met at Eastern High School, and had the D.C. Superintendent speak to us — and one of the local weathermen.

Hands on DC also raises money for scholarships for kids in D.C. schools to go to college, and they had a kid that just graduated this January I think, from scholarship money from Hands on D.C. So it helps out a lot of people in a lot of different ways.

Last year was the first year I did it. We have some friends that organize the different schools — they're site coordinators or they serve on some of the committees that organize each event.

And it's a good experience, I guess?

Oh, it's a great time — a lot of fun. You spend the day with a lot of people working around, getting to meet new people, and then afterwards they sponsor an after-party at a place downtown, for everybody that worked. You get in for free and get discounted food and drinks.

And if you're interested in doing it, how do you take part in it, for next year?

I'm not sure, to tell you the truth!

You'll let us know.

It's usually the first weekend in April, right around then.

Is it always fixing up schools?

Yeah, that's what it is.

And it's organized by a nonprofit — Hands on DC?

Yeah. Next year it'll be the 10th year that they've done something, and they've gotten pretty big. Yeah, it's a nonprofit organization. All the proceeds go to scholarships for local kids. We collect pledges from friends, co-workers, family members and other groups of people that get together — I happen to work with the Michigan State alumni group. So if you get 20 people together and do some fundraisers — different groups will do that sort of thing and donate their money or donate supplies for a school, that sort of thing.

Well, thanks very much.

No problem. §