Painting is a lot of fun.
Seriously, it is!
Everyone has a story about a painting job gone horribly awry - an awful color; an ambitious job attempted solo, resulting in fuzzy edges and paint on the ceiling; splotches of paint embedded in carpet fibers.
But picture a painting team with fifteen members, all clad in the perfunctory uniform of jeans and a tee shirt, some ragtag members sporting sweats. Each individual is armed with an array of rollers, brushes, tarps, painting cups, and pans. The conference room, kitchen, and boardroom is their arena. Blue tape rims every corner, creating out-of-bound lines around the windows, doors, and ceiling.
The team walks into the stadium, readies themselves with paint dipped brushes and rollers, and then begins aggressively covering the walls with a thick fresh coat. Music is blasted. Individuals paint around, next to, over and under each other, making sure no space is left uncovered. People on ladders paint the blank area near the ceiling missed by those with rollers, others edge around the outlets, light switches, and doorframes.
For our service with Save the Bay, we spent the day repainting the facility’s conference room, boardroom, and kitchen. Though not a typical volunteer opportunity, we were happy to help refresh the facilities that the organization rents out 5 days a week for income to support its staff, programs, and outreach. It was a refreshing change of pace, giving Tim and I some time to reflect on our journey thus far. Additionally, we got the opportunity to interact with the huge number of Americorps members (all of whom work in the Providence area) that joined us at Save the Bay.
Established to help foster a personal connection between people and Narragansett Bay and encouraging investment in the Bay’s future, Save the Bay operates in four program areas: protect, restore, explore and connect.
The protection program is the first line of advocacy for Narragansett Bay; encompassing a wide range of activities from coordinating volunteers during oil spill clean-ups to advocating at the local, state, and federal level to assure that laws, regulations, and funds are directed toward a healthy Bay future. The BayKeeper program, the eighth WaterKeeper Program established in the U.S., serves as Rhode Island’s first responder during environmental emergencies.
The restoration program works toward reestablishing three kinds of habitats essential for the productivity and health of the Bay: fish runs, salt marshes, and eelgrass beds. Volunteers helping with the eelgrass restoration may combine their passion for scuba diving or kayaking with their service, donning the equipment for either activity and heading to the water to help harvest and replant eelgrass shoots.
The Explore the Bay education program teaches children and adults to understand, explore and appreciate the fragile complexity of the estuarine ecosystem. By providing hands-on public education on the water, on the coastline or in the classroom, Save The Bay promotes discovery and protection of this essential resource. The education program reaches 23,000 school children a year through a multitude of programs. Tim and I were given a tour of the ed facility, during which we investigated the touch tank and heard about the 30 or so programs and learning labs operated by Save the Bay, including: plankton, water, horseshoe crabs, geology, birds, and science of water.
Finally, the Connect program seeks to create a community of lifelong Bay stewards, who will preserve the Bay for the generations who will live here in the future.
In the last fiscal year, approximately 1,500 volunteers contributed 9,000 hours to Save the Bay. Ranging from age 6 to age 92, volunteers worked on shoreline clean ups (21,000 lbs of trash was removed), on habitat restoration, at special events, doing field work, marking storm drains, helping in the office, assisting as docents at the two facilities and providing additional support as needed to the organization.
But for our part, we painted.
Painting gives you time to think. The act of painting is meditative, requiring just enough precision and detail to ensure clean lines and the absence of spilled paint, but repetitive enough to allow a blank mind. In our case, we covered the walls in a shade called Sea Grass – how appropriate.
Hours later, the game ends, the team steps back, and the field has changed – brightened appreciably. Broad strokes, first made with the roller, then with the edging brush, incite the once marred wall to slowly uncover a fresh face, a distant memory from the tired color that used to be prominently featured. Turn around and you are faced with a crew of grubby, paint splattered and dripped individuals. Painting is much like volunteering – an activity in which you work to brighten the world, but come away bearing the marks of your service, your experience.
And, during our day, nary a drop of paint was spilled by any members of the team (well, none on the carpet, anyway). Tragic painting story sucessfully avoided!
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