Working For Worcester 2013
2013 By The Numbers:
2 new playgrounds
3 new community gardens
4 new basketball courts
7 different Worcester colleges represented
12 community recreation sites
28 generous sponsors
540 eager volunteers
$62,000 worth of infrastructural improvements
At 7pm Saturday evening, April 20th, the first annual Working for Worcester project day finished up. For 10 hours over the course of the day, volunteers from every corner of our city came together to sweat, laugh, and work as an army of citizens. All in all close to 540 volunteers, representing 7 different Worcester colleges and universities (Holy Cross, Clark, WPI, Assumption, Mass College of Pharmacy, UMass Med, and Worcester State), picked up everything from power drills to spring rakes and renovated 12 community recreation sites. Students and residents high-fived all over the city, as $60,000 worth of infrastructural improvements unfolded. Community pride and ownership was contagious as Working for Worcester marked the construction of 2 new playgrounds, 4 new basketball courts, a new sandbox, a dance studio, a baseball field, a teen recreation room, a food pantry, a school cafeteria, 3 community gardens, new walking trails, and everything in between.
What Working for Worcester focused on in 2016:
With twelve schools in the Worcester Consortium, tens of thousands of students every year come to Worcester where they reap the benefits of the city’s infrastructure, cultural opportunities, and great hospitality. Keeping this in mind, Working for Worcester connects student groups at these institutions, as well as local government and community action groups, to organize a giant moment of collaborative community service. This past April, WforW successfully brought together 540 college students from 7 of Worcester's universities to literally build $62,000 worth of recreation infrastructure and programming at 12 sites around the city. The project was an incredible moment of collective community action and engagement for the city's college student and resident populations.