2011 United Way Day of Caring

 

story and photos by Joel Rafkin
[email protected]

More than 900 volunteers pitched in to complete projects at 71 organizations that serve the communities of eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas for the United Way Day of Caring.The event occurs annually in April.

Eleven people from Citizens Bank and Trust, Arvest Bank, BancorpSouth, First National Bank and Golden Living worked on Spring cleaning at the Van Buren Boys & Girls Club on Thursday. Cindy Faldon, the club’s director, said they washed the floors, tables, walls and windows. The exterior improvements including flower bed maintenance and painting the women’s restroom at Huckleberry Field.

Faldon said that the club usually closes for a week between the school year and summer program for maintenance but due to the winter weather, the school year was extended and the club will not be able to close. The volunteers accomplished much of the necessary tasks.

In Fort Smith, a crew of 10 people from Arvest Bank and the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith tackled painting and clean-up projects at Lincoln Childcare Center. They painted two sheds, two swing sets and a bridge railing in just under three hours.

In an extension of the charitable mood, the crew from UAFS had a good idea for some unwanted play equipment the center was discarding from the storage sheds. Candace Lookadoo said they decided to take the items to Abilities Unlimited which is just down the block from Lincoln Childcare Center.

Also, 35 volunteers from Arvest Bank, First National Bank, UAFS Boreham Library and Ron Calhoun and Associates logged 124.5 hours at the River Valley Regional Food Bank during the Day of Caring.

The volunteers sorted and selected through more than a truckload of various food drive products to box up enough food to feed roughly 20,000 people in the food bank’s 8-country service area. The food bank has 203 member agencies in Crawford, Sebastian, Franklin, Johnson, Logan, Polk and Yell counties that deliver food to over 57,000 people at hunger risk.
 
In all, 28,184 pounds of food were readied for distribution.

The River Valley Regional Food Bank, located at 1420 N. 32nd St. in Fort Smith, has been in continuous operation for 25 years. Last year, the food bank distributed 4.3 million pounds of food, valued at $6.3 million.