Location: Montrose Beach
Date: Wednesday, April 22, 2015; 1:00-3:00 pm
As I have posted in the past, I am a part of my company’s “Culture Crew”, and we have had some successful
ventures in the past. Now we were debating some activity for the ‘Earth Day’,
after having done an “Earth Week” last year, albeit with
limited success. This year, I was put in
charge – since I said that I knew a few organizations - to organize the outing
for our colleagues. As with anything
else, I contacted Wilson and he suggested that we go to the ‘American Indian Center’ to cook for the
elders and listen to stories from them. It
was an intriguing idea since we would be learning about our land from the
natives, but our team wanted to do something outside, which was totally
understandable.
We sent an application to ‘Chicago Park District (CPD)’ – they only worked via a paper based
application - and also called ‘Lincoln
Park Conservancy (LPC)’. The ‘LPC’ was very accommodating and were
willing to work with us. But they could
not accommodate us on the actual ‘Earth
Day’. In fact, their ‘Earth Day’ was on Saturday 25th
and they were willing to let us come then.
But we wanted to do it on a weekday, not knowing how many of our
colleagues would be willing to give up a few hours of their weekend. While waiting for the ‘CPD’ to respond, we scheduled a tentative project with ‘LPC’ for May 1st. However, CPD finally responded and after a
couple of phone calls and email exchanges with the lady over there, we finally
had a project for April 22nd at ‘Montrose
Harbor Beach’.
Next came the recruitment activity, where we sent an email seeking volunteers and received several responses. We had approximately 18 people who would be
participating in Chicago and then it was a question of logistics. We found out peoples ideal departure times
based on meeting etc. and realized that 1:30 pm was probably the best time to
start – though the ‘CPD’ really
wanted us there earlier. I bought some
Granola Bars and a 36 pack of water and got a ride to the beach from a
colleague. With our luck, it was
extremely cold with wind gusts and I even saw a few snowflakes in the air. Not ideal beach weather by any means!
 |
| Look at us, hard at work! |
Upon arriving, I met our site contact Janis and handed her
the volunteer waiver forms, which they has requested that we sign beforehand. Our group arrived in batches and once
everyone was here, we got our assignment. All along the beach, there were “shower pits” – areas where people wash
off the lake I suppose – and they were full of sand. Our job was to dig out 3 such pits and try to
get them as “sand free” as we could. We all grabbed shovels and split into teams. It was hard work and very soon I wasn’t cold
anymore. The pits were deep and there
was a lot of sand inside; and it took some effort in getting everything out of
there. Seeing that we were done, another
‘CPD’ staff member - Mike - told us
that we could help in cleaning the sides of the building where sand had
accumulated in piles. Since there was a
narrow path separating the building from the beach, we had to use wheelbarrows
to collect the sand. This involved us filling
them up and then transferring to the beach to dump, which was not as easy as it sounds and was
quite exhausting.
There were a few other odd jobs that Mike requested, like
cleaning up some leaves that had accumulated on the side of the building, but
we were having lots of fun. One of our
colleagues had her birthday and we even sang “Happy Birthday” to her as she posed for pictures while sitting
inside the wheelbarrow. We had made
significant change this afternoon and Janis and Mike appreciated that. We left having felt that the ‘Earth Day’ had definitely been a
success. Hey, its not every afternoon that
you can take off from work and go to the beach!
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