Go Forth To Serve: 2010

My team went on a little foray to Frankfort, KY the first week and a half of May to participate in the national kickoff of AmeriCorps Week. The chosen project for this year's event was the Build-a-Bed blitz, organized by two Kentucky AmeriCorps programs (Success Corps and FRYSC Corps) that work with family resources and needs. There have been numerous studies which show that not having a good night's sleep can negatively affect a child's performance in school as well as their behavior and even their health! The goal of the project was to build 500 beds for school-aged Kentucky children who, due to various family circumstances, don't have a bed of their own.

a map of Kentucky showing where the beds would be distributed, by county. There are stories of the kids who would be receiving the beds pasted around the outside

My team, along with two other teams from Vicksburg (River 7 and Delta 2) and 5 of our Support Team Leaders, helped setup for, lead, and cleanup after the 24 hour event. We arrived on Sunday, May 2, narrowly avoiding the floods in Nashville, and got to work cutting and sanding 20 tons of lumber into the pieces our volunteers would need for the build. We worked in shifts over the blitz and led about 1000 volunteers in building a total of 557 beds that were immediately distributed around the state. Each bed was donated with a mattress and a "bedtime bag" that had sheets, a pillow, a blanket, a handmade afghan and a handmade quilt, pajamas, 3 storybooks, a nightlight, a toothbrush and toothpaste, and 3 stuffed animals. One of my favorite parts of the project was getting to put the bags together!

Corps Members sanding... you can see the sawdust flying through the air...

bedtime bags ready to go!

A sample bed put together. The volunteers got to decorate the slats to send messages to the kids!

Katie decorating slats with our 2 year-old friend

Beds packaged up and ready to be sent out!

Our team of task leaders!

I am incredibly proud of the work we accomplished and really enjoyed our time in Kentucky. It's a beautiful area of the country and we were welcomed with open arms by everyone we met.

Tomorrow is our last day of work in Greensboro and then we'll clean and pack and head back to Vicksburg on Wednesday for outprocessing and graduation (May 27!). I'll have another post after graduation, but until then, I'm sending lots of love to all my faithful readers :)

Hi all,

As my year with AmeriCorps winds down (just 6 weeks left!), I've been thinking more and more frequently about how nice it will be to come home and get back to my "real life." I've really enjoyed my year and have learned a lot, but lately I've been feeling tired and ready to just be in charge of myself.

That attitude had me in a pretty rough place these past two weeks, so I decided I better do something to keep my head and heart grounded in what I'm doing here as I finish up. One of the things I decided to do was to walk around and enjoy the beautiful sights that Greensboro, AL has to offer in the springtime. I took a bunch of pictures for y'all, so please enjoy!