On Friday, April 7^th, students from the Center for Employment Training (CET) in Colton and employees from the management offices at the Galleria at Tyler joined forces to paint Nancy’s home. Nancy recently moved to Riverside to be closer to her family, after living in Oregon for many years. Nancy, lives on a fixed income and has had difficulties making repairs and improvements to her mobile home. Both teams were excited to work with each other and even more excited to help Nancy.

The afternoon began with Nancy greeting all of the volunteers, offering them refreshments, and thanking them for coming out to help her. Once everyone got acquainted, they quickly got right to work. The volunteers prepared the worksite by laying out the painting tarps, lining the paint trays, and preparing the rollers. The afternoon was filled with laughter and good times as all of the students, Galleria at Tyler managers, Nancy, and even some of her neighbors shared stories with one another and bonded over all of the things that they found they had in common.

The project was completed in only 3 hours and Nancy was overjoyed with all of the work that had been done. She couldn’t thank the volunteers enough. The volunteers were very satisfied with their work and glad to be able to bond with one another and help Nancy achieve a safe, decent, and affordable place to call home. Nancy exclaimed, “I can’t believe all of you came out to help me, you all are so amazing”. So thank you Center for Employment Training students and Galleria at Tyler managers for making Nancy’s home look new again.