G.I.V.E. Day

One of the major projects that I work on at my part-time job at Royal Caribbean/Celebrity Cruises is our annual company volunteer day..we call it G.I.V.E Day. This year, we had everyone go to Shake-A-Leg Miami and His House Children's Home. For weeks, our painting and landscape contractors have had their crews out preparing each site for the work to be done on the actual day. For Shake-A-Leg, there was painting and island clean up, a smaller group worked at this amazing place that offers children and adults with disabilites an alternative classroom, Biscayne Bay. The group there finished all of their tasks with time to spare, thank goodness our weather was perfect.

Up North, at His House Children's Home, when I drove up, I all could see was people everywhere painting! Hundreds of volunteers painted all the fence posts around the large property, several buildings and homes. People painted murals on common areas

and tons of trees, palms and shrubs were planted.

His House is an unbelievable facility where foster care children are placed, many on an emergency basis. Right now, there are many orphans from Haiti placed there, some waiting to be reunited with their parents, others waiting to be placed with new families. There are many cottages on the property and we did an extreme makeover on two of them.


I seriously could not believe the progress made in such a short amount of time. With the help of some of our in-house designers and IKEA, they came out beautifully and we had a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate the outcome. The children who are going to live there are going to love their new home.

So many hours of work led up to Saturday's event, but it was all so worth it. Helen and I have two smaller G.I.V.E. Days left, so the work is not done, but Saturday was an enormous accomplishment and everyone had a fantastic time.