VoluntEARS

I haven't posted in awhile and for some reason I thought I should get back to blogging again. I told myself last June that I would document my journeys here in Florida. Being 10 months late is not too shabby.

If you guys didn't know, doing community service has always been a passion of mine. I actually discovered it when I joined my college organization, Alpha Phi Omega (an international service fraternity). I had been pretty busy with work that I haven't exactly made time to continue my passion in the East Coast. VoluntEARS at Disney creates service projects for the cast members to give back to their local communities. So lucky me, I got the most awesome opportunity to help out with KaBOOM! this past Saturday. We got to build a playground (from the bottom-up) for the Boys and Girls Club in Lakeland, FL. 

Our bus we took from Team Disney at 7:30 am. Rise and shine!

Getting ready to work.

Derrick and I in our matching VoluntEARS shirts.

Painting picnic tables!

Check out the mess I made all over my arm.

Aaron holding up the bar for the playground. He was the only capable guy of doing it. (He's over 6 ft tall)

Turns out that ESPN Wide World of Sports had an extra basketball court and they donated it to the Boys and Girls Club! If you read it, it says "Disney's Wide World of Sports."

Mickey ears always adds a nice touch.

The end results of the picnic tables we painted. We later found out they were putting large checker/chess boards on top of it... so it covered our beautiful painting job.

Putting in the slide to the playground.

Aaron raking in the mulch (and if you can spot me in the back). By that time, I'm sweating like a pig with a bad sunburn on my neck.

Preparing for the cement to hold the foundation, so we can fill it up with mulch.

Whoo! Radio Disney was pumping it up too while we were working!

This project was a great service event. We actually were able to build the whole playground in just 6 hours! It's impressive to see what a huge impact the cast members and the community can do to make a difference. Thank you, Disney, for giving me this awesome opportunity to contribute. :)

P.S. I also want to give a shout out to my pkids and IPHI-family back in APHIO. Doing this project made me think about you guys tremendously. I miss you guys so much!