2014 Featured Site Recaps

Banis Park
Located in the Grafton Hill neighborhood of Worcester, Banis Park is one of the heaviest trafficked parks in the city.  Not just on weekends, but everyday, the park is PACKED with people of all ages– adults relaxing and the younger kids running wild!  We were able to transform Banis Park into something amazing!  Thanks to the incredible support we received from UNUM and Dismas House, we took an empty plot of grass and turned it into a fully-equipped jungle gym playground.  We also accomplished a series of smaller projects such as rebuilding and repainting all of the benches and tables throughout the park, installing plants including arborvitaes and rhododendronds, and overall improving the entire atmosphere of the park!
Community Harvest Project
The Community Harvest Project distributes all of the food it grows to the Worcester County Food Bank, which in turn feeds over 100,000 people in Worcester.  For some time, the Community Harvest Project has sought to build an interactive learning garden for elementary students in Worcester.  On April 12th, Working for Worcester made this goal a reality!  We constructed and installed nearly a dozen raised planting beds as well as prepared them for the upcoming growing season.  This new garden will ultimately serve as a platform from which hundreds of children will be taught about sustainable food and nutrition.
Boys & Girls Club- Great Brook Valley
At Great Brook Valley, the mission of our project was to provide the children of Worcester with a community building equipped with brand new sports equipment, like-new facilities, and a fun atmosphere to go to after school.  For this specific project, we renovated the three main classrooms and installed new televisions, whiteboards, computers, and a brand new dance room with mirrors.  New hooks and cubbies were added throughout the space so that the kids had a place to store their backpacks and any other belongings.  This project was founded on fanstatic collaborations with The Hanover Insurance Group and the Worcester Housing Authority, and we are thirlled to provide the children of Worcester with a brand-new Boys & Girls Club!!
Lincoln Street School
After much dedicated and labor-intensive work, the Lincoln Street School playground has now been completely refurbished. Volunteers got together and installed hundreds of feet of brand-new yellow fence covering, made the space more eco-friendly and better-looking by planting various trees and shrubs in a previously unusable space, re-mulched areas lacking safe ground covering, and installed a brand-new jungle gym, complete with a swing set and monkey bars!  Thanks to the hard work of dozens of volunteers and partnerships with UNUM and Abbive, the space is now cleaner, more equipped, and better suits students' outdoor recreation needs!!
University Park Campus School
University Park Campus School serves 200 students in Worcester's Main South neighborhood.  Before April 12th the school had virturally no outdoor recreational spaces.  Working for Worcester repaved the uneven cement and installed a basketball hoop complete with court-side benches and a shooting key.  We also designed four-square courts on the repaved surface and helped paint indoor classrooms and offices. After a long day of hard work, the neighborhood children and UPC students finally now have a fun, safe place to play and hang out after school!!
Vernon Hill School
The Vernon Hill School serves over 480 pre-k through 6th graders every year and its outdoor spaces serve both its students and the local neighborhood.  Working for Worcester sought to update these recreational areas and make them more usable.  We installed an additional basketball hoop complete with a shooting key as well as a "fun-hoop" and tetherball court.  Finally, we created an outdoor classroom of brightly colored picnic tables and framed with a number of new plants for privacy.  Today, the children of Vernon Hill are throughly enjoying and utilizing these new play spaces each and every day!
Worcester East Middle School
Worcester East Middle School recently added a fitness room that contains strength and cardio machines, but the space is primarily used by the male students.  Our objective was to match this space with a more girl-oriented area.  We transformed the school’s longstanding girl’s locker room, which at the time was used for storage, into a full-blown dance and yoga studio!  We mounted brand-new light fixtures, repainted the surrounding walls with details including dancing silhouettes, and installed a commercial grade dance floor along with a professional audio system.  The outcome of the project resulted with a HUGE transformation of a room that once resembled a dungeon into a room that will provide a safe atmosphere for fun and dance!!
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