Mike Block shared an important tip for those who may be geographically challenged: “There is no notch in Colorado.”
And then with a spin of his paint roller, he shaped a northeast corner for Colorado, and notched a chunk out of southwestern Nebraska.
“The people in Colorado will thank me–they almost moved to Nebraska without knowing it,” Block said, with a playful smile.
Block’s saving swipe restored accuracy to the 20-by-40-foot map of the United States that he and a dozen co-workers from Lucent Technologies’ Lisle-Naperville business complex voluntarily painted on the playground at the Hall School in Aurora.
Their painting of the huge geography education tool for the school’s pupils was one of hundreds of volunteer community projects being conducted across the country and around the world by more than 9,000 company employees as part of the company’s second annual Global Day of Caring, which officially was Saturday.
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“The strong volunteer commitment of giving back to the community has been our hallmark,” said Bob Jerich, Lucent Technologies’ public relations director for Illinois. “We did a survey of our employees in 1995 and found that over 60 percent had a regular volunteer commitment to something in their community, giving an average of over two hours a week.”
Jerich volunteered his Friday to help paint walls and clean up an elder care center in Chicago, housekeeping tasks common to many of the projects being tackled by company employees, along with prairie seed harvesting, stocking of food pantries, recording books for the blind, and helping out with Special Olympic events.
“We find that with a lot of these projects there isn’t enough staff to do the tougher jobs like cleaning and painting,” he said. “They’re operating on a shoe string with limited staff and so the team leaders will talk to them about any project they might have that has been dragging around for a year or two that really needs to be done.”
Each project is spearheaded by a company employee and usually stems from that employee’s own volunteer work, Jerich said.
Giving back to the community helped motivate the map making volunteers, particularly employee Linda Matheny, who along with her fellow employee and husband, Kevin, spent her morning helping to outline in white paint the individual states on the map’s baby blue background. An afternoon volunteer crew filled in each state with one of five different colors.
“We live in the neighborhood and my children went to school here 25 years ago so I think that it’s great to give something back to our neighborhood school,” she said. “Plus it was fun.”