Hundreds aid nonprofits in annual Day of Caring

Elise Gee

NEWPORT BEACH -- Mike Marvin traded in his computer keyboard Friday

in favor of an aerator and lawn reseeder at the Boy Scouts Sea Base.

Marvin, a technical services manager at Tustin-based Steelcase, was

one of hundreds of volunteers who stormed dozens of Orange County

nonprofit organizations as part of the United Way’s annual Day of Caring.

“Hopefully the next time I drive by this lawn will be green,” Marvin

said surveying his morning’s work.

About 10 other of his co-workers were assigned tasks from restripping

the parking lot to planting jasmine bushes to placing bumpers on a

plastic dock at the sea base. The United Way Day of Caring is meant to

instill awareness in the community about volunteering and the social

needs of nonprofits.

The Day of Caring coincided with the United Way’s kickoff of its

annual fund-raising campaign. The agency hopes to raise $23.8 million in

the next year.

In addition to the sea base, volunteers were sent to Friends in

Service for Humanity to help pack and deliver meals to the homebound.

A group from Enterprise Rent-A-Car worked feverishly to pack dozens of

grocery bags with food and deliver them to needy individuals and families

in the area.

Spirits were high as the volunteers created a virtual assembly line

with runners who fetched pasta toppings, bags of cereal and canned fruit

for others to pile neatly into brown paper bags.

Some even made friendly competition out of packing beans and rice in

plastic bags. Enterprise has volunteered at Days of Caring for more than

a decade.

For some employees, Day of Caring served as a springboard for more

volunteer work.

“It creates a tremendous awareness, after you experience this, of the

need that’s out there,” said David Heywood, an area manager for

Enterprise. “It brings it to ‘Hey this is something you should do for

society all the time, not just through work.”’

For the Boy Scouts Sea Base, the Steelcase volunteers did in hours

what it would take a week or more to do, said David O’Hara, sea base

ranger. For Friends in Service to Humanity, the volunteers increased the

usual work force by sixfold or more.

But both agencies need volunteers year-round. For more information,

call Friends in Service to Humanity at (949) 642-6060 or the Boy Scouts

Sea Base (949) 642-5031.