A regiment of red-shirted volunteers on Saturday spread sand across what will be the volleyball court where more than 100 girls at Wilmington’s GLOW Academy charter school will play this fall. Behind them, another group of volunteers spread red mulch for the picnic area and constructed the tables where the girls of this new school will eat, laugh and learn from a curriculum designed to prepare them for college.
The 50 volunteers at the school’s site were part of the army of 1,900 people who came out for Work on Wilmington last weekend, where groups, churches, businesses and individuals donated their time and their labor at 27 locations across the city.
For the red shirts of Live Oak Bank, the work at the Girls Leadership Academy of Wilmington is inspired from their February meeting with celebrity chef Emeril Lagasse, who prepared an exclusive meal at the bank’s location as part of a fundraising tour for the school for sixth-grade girls that will launch this year. The chef issued a challenge to the bank’s crew to make an impact on their community.
“We told him, ‘We’ll show you what we can do in a year,’” said Kate Groat, among the more than 30 bank employees volunteering. Employees will be tutoring, mentoring and doing other volunteer work over the upcoming semesters at the school.
“This is the beginning of the beginning,” Groat said.
The annual event, organized through the Wilmington Chamber Foundation’s Leadership Wilmington program, encourages volunteers to give four hours of work to one of more than two-dozen locations. Other projects included creating a rooftop event space at The Harrelson Center, planting a vegetable garden at Lake Forest Academy, painting the visitor center at the Battleship North Carolina and landscaping at the Wilmington Area Rebuilding Ministry.
It’s not just the volunteer work, though, that’s a big part of it, said Kristen Gore, GLOW Academy AmeriCorps VISTA. Live Oak Bank also donated basketball goals, benches and the front-end loader used to help move the sand on Saturday.
“They’re awesome,” she said.
The event drew volunteers young and old. When asked what jobs he did at the volunteer site, 10-year-old David Bakker said, “A little bit of everything.” His favorite? “Sweeping. And table testing.”
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