The 2017 United Way Day of Caring took place on Friday, September 15th and was a huge success for us at Meals on Wheels Western Michigan, along with the other participating agencies. United Way helps to fund our agency and provides excellent support for our community. Their Volunteer Center had organized dozens of projects for this year’s Day of Caring, which in turn, is Kent County’s largest corporate volunteering event of the year. The goal of this service day is to help employees from local businesses learn about the needs of our community, give back through service, and discover local agencies that are working to ensure that West Michigan is a place where everyone has the opportunity to thrive!
This year, there were 52 agencies that participated in the volunteer day, over 1,400 volunteers from 22 local companies working on 88 different projects, all coming together as one community.
For us specifically at Meals on Wheels, we had two shifts of volunteers come in to help, two groups in the morning and three in the afternoon. A group of 10 from Spectrum Health packed 465 6-pack emergency meals for our seniors in the morning and in the afternoon, another group of 10 volunteers from Spectrum Health packed 532 6-pack emergency meals! Both groups exceeded our expectations! We also had two groups of volunteers from Steelcase help us paint four bathrooms, our break room, and an accent wall in our packing room. A task that we have wanted to accomplish for a long time but simply have not had the time or manpower to complete. Also in the afternoon, we hosted a group of five from Farmers Insurance that helped our Development Administrator with some event preparation and thank you calls and cards.
We are so grateful and impressed with everything that had been accomplished on this day by an incredibly enthusiastic and compassionate group of volunteers. We can easily say that this has been one of the most productive United Way Day of Caring events that we have been a part of. Thank you, volunteers!
