Corporate volunteers come out in droves for United Way’s Community Care Day

BOSTON - This Thursday, September 24, more than 1,300 Massachusetts employees took to the community to participate in United Way of Massachusetts Bay and Merrimack Valley's (United Way) 18th Annual Community Care Day, an effort to better the region through single-day projects while fostering long-term volunteer engagement. Volunteers have become increasingly important as human service organizations try to save money under rising costs of operating and a growing community need.

According to a study by the Corporation for National and Community Service, America's volunteers dedicated more than 8 billion hours of service in 2008, worth an estimated $162 billion. With a national call for service as a backdrop and community need on the rise, United Way's 1,300 volunteers fanned out to more than 70 project sites throughout Greater Boston, Merrimack Valley, and the South and North Shores, including:

• East Boston Social Centers, Inc. Volunteers from Ernst & Young will be reading to children, engaging in educational activities and playtime activities. 
• Father Bills & Main Spring. Volunteers from State Street will be cleaning the grounds and buildings of this award-winning nonprofit focused on reducing and ultimately ending homelessness in Quincy and surrounding communities.
• Federated Dorchester Neighborhood Houses, Inc. Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. volunteers will work with students in the college prep and career counseling programs. They will perform mock interviews with each student and provide feedback on how to improve interviewing skills. 
• Urban Edge. Volunteers from MVI will work within the community, tree planting, painting of fences and benches, cleaning of neighborhood food pantry. 
• Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation. Volunteers from Bank of America will work to clean up a series of vacant lots in the heart of Codman Square, including the site for a future children's park. With foreclosures impacting neighborhood blight and vandalism, maintaining vacant lots is part of sustaining neighborhoods and keeping hope alive for residents of Codman Square.