UC Riverside’s Kappa Sigma fraternity brothers pitched in Saturday morning to help homeowner, Vicky and her family, paint their home. Vicky is a single mom with four children and lives in the Old Plantation mobile home park in Jurupa Valley. Her mom also lives with them and both are on low fixed incomes, making it difficult to take care of the exterior upkeep, especially a new paint job. As we know well by now, there are rules that homeowners need to comply with when they rent space in a mobile home park and Vicky’s mobile home definitely needed to be painted.
Vicky’s family had painted the trim the weekend before and the Kappa Sigma guys came in to take care of the walls and awnings. Believe it or not, most of them had never painted the exterior of a home, so the morning started with a quick painting 101 after the orientation and mandatory safety talk. To make the job go quickly, everyone split up into four groups to paint each side of the home, while the two brothers handled the awnings. They all did a great job painting the home. Lloyd, the group’s organizer, took on ladder duty. He was hesitant at firs,t but once he had blue tape in hand and knew he could paint without touching the trim, he did great! Rudy, Carlos, Santiago and Thomas also worked on the high areas and did some touch up on the trim. The team worked together and finished up the job in three and a half hours.
Vicky was super pleased with the work and the colors of the home. After the group photo with Vicky, the fraternity brothers got in a circle and gave out a big Kappa Sigma brotherly chant. It was their way of showing their service day dedicated to painting Vicky’s home was a success. The group stayed to help load everything back onto the Habitat truck then took off to enjoy their weekend, no doubt several of them went back to catch up on sleep or studying. Lloyd has already contacted Habitat about another volunteer day in the near future, so this may be the beginning of a nice, long partnership!
