32nd Annual Day of Caring: A Wrap-Up

That's a wrap on the 32nd Annual Day of Caring. And once again, the Eastern Panhandle showed up with hundreds of volunteers!

Volunteers tackled nearly 50 projects at more than 40 nonprofits, schools, parks, and community sites across Berkeley, Jefferson, and Morgan Counties, all in a single day.

What Got Done

Here's just a glimpse of what our community accomplished together:

  • Painted 800 feet of fence at Sam Michaels Park
  • Washed feed buckets, cleaned stalls, and pulled weeds at Horses with Hearts
  • Zip-tied 100 feet of windscreen along the fence at the Morgan County Observatory
  • Handed out 150 bags of fresh, locally grown food with Community Markets
  • Delivered hygiene bags to seniors with Faith Feeding Freedom
  • Made apple butter with the elders in Paw Paw
  • Replanted the butterfly garden at Green Hill Cemetery
  • Rebuilt a garden with a crew of very determined kids 

Neighbors, Not Just a Program

This is what we mean when we say the United Way is powered by people. Each year, the Day of Caring is when our community members decide a nonprofit's to-do list is their to-do list for the day.

It's worth pausing on that. Just days after we marked 25 years since September 11, a day that also happened to be a Day of Caring here in the Eastern Panhandle back in 2001, this year's volunteers carried that same spirit forward. Whether it's a community coming together in grief or a community coming together to paint a fence and fill a food bag, the instinct is the same: show up for each other.

Thank You

To every company that sent a team, every school leadership class and K-Kids club, every family that brought the kids, and every retiree who showed up with their own gloves: thank you.

And to our sponsors, whose support makes the entire day possible: CMA's Toyota of Martinsburg, Patriot Federal Credit Union, Valley Health, P&G, United Bank, E&B Insurance Agency, and Brentwood Industries. Thank you for standing behind this community.

Here's to 32 years of neighbors helping neighbors, and to many more to come.

United is the Way to a Caring Community!