LeChase and United Way
When Tom from LeChase encouraged us to apply for the United Way’s 518 Day projects earlier this year, we were definitely pumped and hopeful. When we learned that our project was not only one of 3o chosen, but also one of 3 or 4 being featured in their promotional material, we were elated.
United Way’s Matt Hunter came out and made a video (you can see it below) and soon after, we were officially matched with LeChase as our volunteer partner. If you don’t already know, we absolutely love LeChase; they were our full on construction of our building company, and they are amazing.
On Friday, the team pictured arrived in the morning, and quickly attacked the huge brush and thicket in the woods behind our property. They accomplished more in 2 or 3 hours than we possibly could have in a year on our own. The project of carving a trail for our children to learn about and enjoy nature on our property was celebrated with a visit from Mr. Ding-a-ling, thanks to the United Way, which coincidentally was repeated later in the day for our staff, thanks to our Executive Director.
So now we have a trail to the pond. There is still work to do on the property around our building – mainly fencing – before we are able to take children onto the trail. We want to ensure that they don’t go down there alone, ever. Once we raise the funds to put up a fence with a gate, and have that installed, the trail itself is very accessible. The trail and area are very swampy, especially with all of this year’s rain. This means that we are in need of more “planking” in the way of wood, palettes, rocks, mulch, sand, etc. to continue the “bridge” that was installed on Friday with palettes.
Another aspect of this project:
We have some awesome interns with us from Union College, and part of their internship involves doing a service project that will help the whole school. Mai and Livvy chose to help us with this and have come up with a mini curriculum of activities for our teachers to draw from when bringing students on the trail. They’ve considered water safety, animals and plants, safety and working together, and have created a series of signs to be posted on the trail, crafts to create from items found on the trail, and their ideas are wonderful.
We will share more on the project as we progress. We are grateful for all of this excitement and help.
Anyone wishing to contribute to funding for the fencing can donate here: https://crossroadcenter.org/donate-to-crossroads/ and please note that you’d like it designated to this project. Palettes, wood, or mulch for this project can be donated by contacting Vickir@Crossroadcenter.org.