Hundreds of Arlingtonians spruced up the city over the weekend. Here’s what they did.
For one Arlington family, a weekend service project served as an opportunity to get outside, give back to the community and cultivate their daughter’s green thumb.
Instead of heading to south Arlington with the rest of their fellow Fielder Church members, Margret , Craig and Lauren Janda spent Saturday morning pulling weeds and trash from the community garden at 406 Summit Ave. Lauren, 13, founded her middle school’s gardening club, and her parents have watched her confidence sprout from tending to her pastime while helping those around her.
“That’s what we teach our kids,” said her mother, Margret Janda. “You can either focus on yourself or you can focus on your community. If you focus on your community and Christ, then everything works out.”
The Jandas were three of more than 750 volunteers who dispatched across the city for Unite Arlington, a weekend of service from Oct. 2 to Oct. 4. Organized by a coalition of 20 local churches and city staff, the event sent people to homes, parks, libraries and gardens to help clean up and complete projects.
United at last
Members of church coalition Engage Arlington began planning a citywide service weekend in late spring with hopes of hosting the event in summer. They shelved their event plans due to coronavirus. Months later, Mayor Jeff Williams suggested hosting it in the fall once case numbers dwindled.
“He wanted to get everyone in the city, all faiths, all businesses, all nonprofits, everybody together to do good in the city,” said Erich Ramsey, Engage Arlington’s founder.
The program kickoff event at Levitt Pavilion was hopeful, yet pensive as Ramsey, Williams and other leaders referenced the last six months of public health crises, protests demanding police reform and political spats during the election season. Between speeches, Martin High School’s orchestra performed a piece to a video of protests, as onlookers wrapped themselves in blankets to ward against chilly October weather.
Jason Paredes, lead pastor at Fielder Church, said the city is nearing a “tipping point” amid a divisive election season and public health crisis.
“We’re either gonna separate, divide, fight and think the worst about each other, or we’re going to come together and join hands and say, ‘We’re gonna be one people and we’re gonna win with love, not with hate,’” he said.
Ramsey described putting together the event, a first of its kind for the coalition, as a learning experience. Nevertheless, he said, organizers were pleased with turnout, and he said the coalition will likely organize another service event in the future.
“In the midst of all that’s going on with COVID and all that, I think we’re very happy for the first time we’ve ever done this,” Ramsey said.
Roots for more service
At the end of his volunteer shift, Duane Braxton was a little frustrated. As president of the Arlington-Grand Prairie alumni chapter of Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, he wished he could have organized more of his brothers to help over the weekend. Braxton’s fraternity cannot officially organize due to the pandemic, but he sent the event information to his chapter to spread the word.
He and three other alumni worked alongside a gardener and learned about the plants along the way. By the end of the morning, he considered purchasing a plot as a project for the young men’s group he leads. Unite Arlington, he said, was just the latest opportunity for him and his brothers to volunteer.
“We often gripe and complain about what’s going on with our community, and we never take the time out to really see what we can do to help,” he said.
The half-acre community space, owned by the city and UT Arlington, holds 78 plots that anyone can adopt for $35 a year on one condition: They donate half their harvests to local food banks. As volunteers cleaned up the surrounding area, gardeners claimed their handfuls of peppers, okra and other crops.
“It really helps the community as a whole because they get fresh produce that’s organically grown,” said Wendy Pappas, the urban forest and land manager for the city.
As she tended to her own plot, Barbara Hastings led volunteers around the plots, discerning weeds from fruit-bearing plants and chard from kale. She has kept plots for as long as they’ve been available — for the better part of a decade — and donates much of what she grows. Hastings and a handful of others have also helped weed the plot over the years, and said they could always use extra hands.
“For the garden to look decent, it’s really nice if someone would come out” and help, she said.
