350 volunteers have impact on Sheraden
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Deloitte LLP employees from left, Spencer Payne, Dave Gross and Denise Williams pull weeds along Chartiers Avenue in Sheraden on June 10, the company's annual day of service. About 350 Deloitte volunteers split into 12 teams to tackle work around the neighborhood.
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It wasn't an extreme makeover. Sheraden is too big for that to happen in one day.
But the impact of the local day of service for which employees of Deloitte volunteer every year may be longer lasting in Sheraden than your typical weed clearing and paint jobs.
Tens of thousands of Deloitte employees nationwide volunteer for the company's "impact day," which was June 10 this year. For the local impact day, Sheraden and Esplen were tapped by Renew Pittsburgh, whose director, Kevin Acklin, and Renew volunteers planned and coordinated the day's activities.
More than 350 volunteers split into 12 teams to put up new signs, landscape, clear overgrowth, secure blighted buildings with artistic boards, paint the skate park, city pool and dugouts at McGunnegle Playground on Allendale Street, entertain elders and children, work at the library and help prepare a 100-year-old building to become the neighborhood's first coffeehouse in the modern coffeehouse era -- more than two decades.
"We wanted to have a project that could be sustainable," Mr. Acklin said. "We partnered with Project Coffeehouse," an organization he and Nathan Mallory, co-owner of Cannon Coffeehouse in Brookline, conceived to build a network of nonprofit coffeehouses citywide to spur social enterprise.
The building that's slated to be a coffeehouse on Adon Street is blighted and has been vacant since 2005 -- the year of a calendar found on the wall during the volunteers' gutting of the interior.
They also built a deck on the front. The building will be rehabilitated by Renew Pittsburgh volunteers.
City Councilwoman Theresa Kail-Smith said some people think the building should have been condemned and are concerned about congestion with a coffeehouse and nearby after-school activities. She added, "But people do want a coffee shop. ... Overall it was exciting, and we are extremely grateful to the volunteers. They worked nonstop."
First Published June 23, 2011 5:07 am
