Vaughn: A hearty 'thank you' to volunteers
Sometimes when people do good, we forget to tell them how proud we are of them.
There are so many caring, hardworking and selfless people out there that get overshadowed by all the spewing of negativity entrenched in daily life. At our office, we have a fantastic staff that works tirelessly to make sure that Richmond County Extension is doing as much as we can to positively impact our local citizens’ lives. I don’t tell them enough how proud I am of them.
Our office also is the home base for about 140 active Extension volunteers that amaze me on the amount of work they do to help with an endless list of projects throughout the CSRA. I could fill an entire newspaper with all of the ways the group of volunteers associated with Richmond (and Columbia, Lincoln, Aiken) County Extension takes their personal time and invests back into making a better community.
It is not fair to single one person or group of people out for how much volunteer work is done because so much effort is done behind the scenes that I never see. But in the past couple of weeks, I have had a little more time to get more intimately involved in a few projects where our groups of volunteers have been diligently working and they deserve some serious accolades.
One of our projects where our volunteers are regularly involved is Lynndale Inc.
Lynndale is a community support service that helps adults with disabilities access employment and community resources, develop life skills, and participate in group and individual activities. I met Greg and Tracy over there this week to help with pruning some overgrown trees and shrubs. The G and T team came prepared with their own saws, ladders, tarps, trucks, gloves and pickup truck. We tackled the first of many overgrown crape myrtles in a couple of hours and I then went to look around in the onsite Lynndale greenhouse.
When I walked in, there were four of our Extension volunteers working in the greenhouse that I had no idea were visiting that day. They are there regularly making sure the greenhouse plants are staying healthy and I was happy for them to give me a tour.
Lynndale was one of three locations that Team Greg and Tracy busted out a bunch of hard manual labor in the past week. They were seen at Pendleton King Park working in the Hydrangea garden and also working in another one of my favorite places in Augusta, the Vineyard Giving Farm.
My buddy and UGA Master Gardener, Elliot Price, started Vineyard Giving Garden on Parrish Road with some energy, vision and a lot of folks willing to help.
Elliot teamed up with Vineyard Church of Augusta to utilize a plot designated for a small gardening space and took this community garden into orbit. The garden is intended to grow fresh, wholesome produce to donate to Storehouse Food Pantry associated with Vineyard Church of Augusta. With the support of the church and donations from various organizations like Lowe’s, the Georgia Master Gardener Association and tons of super hard work from a pile of people, Elliot was able to accomplish his five-year plan for this garden in five months. Super volunteer, Linda S. sent me a report of the accomplishments of the Giving Garden from 2022. She sent me the report on what happened to be the third anniversary of the Giving Garden’s founding.
I was floored with the report. About 60 volunteers, of which 20 were Extension volunteers, logged 1,460 hours of volunteer work last year. The math says in 2022 at least one volunteer was in the Giving Garden every day of the year for four hours. And what were the results of all this volunteer work? Food donations directly from this garden to Storehouse Food Pantry was 1,375 lbs. Unbelievable.
Tracy called me the evening after we did the pruning at Lynndale to thank me for coming to help. I kept thinking to myself, I am the one that should be reaching out to you to thank you, and Greg, and all the ladies working in the Lynndale greenhouse, and Diane at Pendleton King Park, and Elliot and his 60+ volunteers that produce three-quarters of a ton of food for people in need.
To these people that volunteer to make our community a better place on their own time and most of the time on their own dime, a gigantic thank you. I am proud of you.
This article originally appeared on Augusta Chronicle: Campbell Vaughn praises CSRA volunteers for all of their efforts
