Volunteers Offer Help For Day of Caring

The annual Day of Caring on Friday brought out hundreds of volunteers around the Lowcountry to offer help to nonprofits and local schools.

At Howe Hall Arts Infused Magnet School, members of the Charleston Passport Center worked with students on an art and educational project on the playground. Together they were painting a map of the United States that would then be populated with ropes to show different rivers and cones to show mountains.

"It gets us out from behind the desk and we get to come out and help these students do something different," said group leader Tamera Barnette, noting the work alone will be an education for students. "When you're enjoying what you're doing, you're going to learn from it."

Assistant Principal Katie Taie noted that the Day of Caring is one of several efforts at the school and in the district to bring parents and the community into the schools.

At Goose Creek High School, crews from the Charleston Regional Development Alliance and the Naval Nuclear Training School painted classrooms — going from a battleship grey to a lighter, friendly shade of brown. It's the kind of project that the school has been tackling one classroom at a time when the manpower has been available.

Volunteers from the Navy school and Charleston Water System provided extra hands for several maintenance projects at Westview Primary School.

With extra work required to prepare the school this year for Head Start students, windows needed cleaning and the landscaping needed a little polish, said Assistant Principal Lindsey Marino. "It's stuff that keeps getting put on the back burner," she said.

At Westview Elementary School, Principal Aimee Fulmer was excited about the work volunteers accomplished  — particularly uprooting a large, dead cedar bush near the front entrance. "I'm so excited I can hardly contain myself," Fulmer said.