By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — The United Way Community Work Day is Saturday.
"This is an opportunity for volunteers to help nonprofits who just don't have the capacity to make repairs, paint, get things done that are much needed at their organization," said United Way Executive Director Lisa Gleason. "We have about 200 volunteers who are going to be helping with projects all over Reno County."
The Community Work Day will look different as the annual breakfast will not happen due to the pandemic.
"We had to make some adjustments, certainly, to make sure that we are keeping people safe and providing a good environment for people to come and work in," Gleason said. "Usually, we have about 600. We do about 30 projects. We purposely pared down the projects this year so that we could keep them mainly outside, mainly being able to social distance."
The Community Work Day precedes United Way of Reno County’s kick off of the annual fundraising campaign.
"One of the main things that we made the decision on, is we would not be combining any teams this year, which we usually do," Gleason said. "We usually do about five Brush Up Hutch houses, helping elderly and disabled who can't paint their own houses, but they're such big projects, you usually have to combine teams to get them done. We made the choice not to do that, so we're only going to be painting two houses this year."
These volunteers will paint those houses for Brush Up Hutch, clean up Carey Park, work at the Boys and Girls Club, paint at TECH and work on the Early Education Center among other projects.