Contact: Kelly Bulmer
765-647-2789
United Way of Franklin County Makes Exciting Changes to Annual Day of Caring
Brookville, IN: The Board of Directors of the United Way of Franklin County (UWFC) recently voted to make some changes to an annual event known as “Day of Caring”. The yearly event has taken place in the fall since at least the year 2000 historic records indicate.
“Most United Ways across the country hold some sort of day to do some community work, they fall all over the calendar though, a neighboring United Way does theirs in September for example,” explains UWFC Director, Kelly Bulmer.
Bulmer goes on to say, “For the past few years, the board has discussed making some changes to the day to make it more mission-minded, rather than a day of raking leaves in people’s yard. Not that that isn’t worthy of doing, I think we felt it just lacked a real mission focus.”
In recent years, prior to COVID, the Day of Caring Committee found it difficult to find projects to complete, and mainly got requests for leaves to be raked in yards around Brookville specifically in the two subdivisions by the schools, since most of the volunteers are students seeking volunteer hours because of transportation and liability issues; working in those subdivisions made it easier to manage.
Prior to the September board meeting, Bulmer did some research and found on the United Way Worldwide (UWW) website it is referred to as a “Day of Action” and UWW encourages the date to be June 21st, the longest day of the year.
After much discussion the board voted to hold a community-wide Day of Action on June 21, 2022. Each community in Franklin and the parts of Ripley County that UWFC currently serves will have a project completed by a community task force. Currently, UWFC is looking for task force leaders in Brookville, Blooming Grove, Laurel, Andersonville, Metamora, Cedar Grove, Mt. Carmel, Oldenburg, Batesville, Sunman, Milan, and Versailles. Ideas for projects are also being sought in each community.
“We obviously want to have a big impact on that day, but it will be up to each of the smaller communities what they want to do. We are open to ideas that are within reason. We must be able to finish the project in a day, so it can’t be a building project or something with a lot of liability. Ideas we thought of are: roadway cleanups, planting flowers in a community garden, or painting, for example,” states Bulmer.
The UWFC board understands this will take a lot of volunteers and coordination. Only the communities that have a task force with an assigned leader will get a project done. The hope is for people to take ownership of their community and step up to make a difference.
“We don’t want it to be punitive. We want each community to have a stake in it, it’s about pride in where you live, and we seek ideas and manpower. For example, we don’t want to show up in Laurel and say here is what we are going to do, instead we are encouraging Laurel community members to say, this is what we’d like to do, and we want to help”, explains Dawn Rosenberger, UWFC President.
If you want to lead a task force in your community, contact UWFC by email at info@uwfcin.org or sign up on the website at www.uwfcin.org by October 31, 2021. UWFC plans to get business sponsors to cover the cost of supplies in each community. Project ideas can be emailed to the address above as well. Updates on the Day of Action will continue to be shared as needed.
United Way of Franklin County has been serving the community for over 30 years and has sought to positively impact the lives of those in our community by assessing needs, uniting partner agencies, organizations and volunteers and devoting our financial resources and efforts to the most critical needs.