Thanks, once again, to the AVID students from the Ramona High School Habitat Chapter. For the second year in a row, they gave up their Martin Luther King holiday to work with Habitat Riverside on another ABWK project. Senior couple, Marty and Sandy, who own a mobile home in Riverside’s King Arthur mobile home park are certainly very grateful for these big-hearted, student volunteers. The park cited the couple, requiring that the exterior of the home must be brought up to park standards with the faded paint needing attention. The home didn’t look too bad from a distance. It’s when you get close up that you see the issues.
The Ramona High School AVID students and their advisors showed up right on time and ready to go. Painting is nothing new for these students, as they have completed almost a dozen projects over the last few years. Carol, one of our volunteer leaders, opened the day with the devotion. Then, we all split off to get right after the painting of all four walls at the same time. Half of the students had extension poles and rollers to paint as high as they could, with the rest tackling the lower nooks and crannies with brushes. The teachers and parents hit the ladders to paint the trim and other high areas that the students could not reach. The dark blue trim took two coats in some areas.
Ebonnye, one of our Federal Work Study Interns joined us and handled the job of checking in the volunteers and getting photos for the day. She also pitched in and helped Carol with the patio side of the home.
It was a busy and quick morning project because of the group’s experience. That experience showed in the quality of the painting, too. This group has it down now finishing up the painting job in just over three hours. Pretty impressive for a group of high school students! It was such a thorough job that the students had time to do some weeding and even moved back all of the furniture and lawn ornaments to the right places. The Ramona High AVID students always like to do the job right.
Sandy, the homeowner, was excited and honored to pose for the final picture with the volunteers. She made sure that they all knew how she felt about their help and kept telling everyone what a blessing they were.
The Ramona Habitat Chapter students, advisors and friends are not just an amazing group of volunteers. They are awesome people and truly are an integral part of this Habitat Affiliate.
