Scenes from 2015, above. For more about Comcast Cares Day 2015, click here.
On Saturday, April 30, more than 3,000 Comcast NBCUniversal employees and their families, friends and community partners will “make change happen” as they volunteer to improve several neighborhoods and nonprofits around Puget Sound and Spokane as part of the 15th annual Comcast Cares Day.
Comcast Cares Day, which takes place each April during National Volunteer Month, is Comcast NBCUniversal’s companywide celebration of their year-round commitment to service and the nation’s largest single-day corporate volunteer effort in the country.
Here is a listing of sites by location:
Aberdeen: Downtown Aberdeen Revitalization – Comcasters team up with the city for a massive clean-up and beautification of Downtown Aberdeen. Activities include weeding, sweeping, cleaning curb lines, and planting flowers. Volunteers will enjoy music, lunch and, of course, a Comcast Cares Day T-Shirt.
Read what the Daily World reported about the coming event.
Auburn: Auburn Valley YMCA – Auburn-based employees will be transforming the Auburn YMCA’s Summer Camp area by building raised flower beds and planters. Volunteers will also be painting picnic tables, landscaping, spreading bark & weeding.
Bellingham: Lydia Place – Volunteers will help serve Lydia Place’s mission to support women and children transitioning from homelessness and sustain their independence. Volunteers will help clean and organize the facility for families, provide landscaping to the exterior and make the facility a safe, joyous place for women and families to rebuild their lives.
Bremerton: Bremerton Boys & Girls Clubs – For the third year in a row, Comcast of Bremerton will be helping out the local Boys & Girls Club. Volunteers will help support the wonderful work they do for youth. Comcasters and their families and friends will be doing general landscaping and cleanup of their Kitsap Campus.
Kirkland: Kirkland Watershed Park Restoration – Workers will help restore part of Kirkland’s natural parkland by removing invasive plants that threaten to outgrow and overtake the natural occurring species. By doing so, this promotes healthy forest growth and self-sustaining ecosystems. Consider this a weeding project on a larger scale, and volunteers will enjoy the serenity of the forest and birds singing in the process.
Marysville: Marysville Boys & Girls Club – Comcasters based in our Everett offices will spend the day revitalizing a Boys and Girls Club – a staple in any community. This club serves school age kids every day as a safe place. Volunteers will be painting, providing general clean-up, organizing, light landscaping, pressure washing and possibly some carpentry work.
Olympia: Olympia Kiwanis Food Bank Garden and Community Firewood Bank and Thurston County Food Bank. The Kiwanis Club of Olympia Food Bank Garden provides organic vegetables to the Thurston County Food Bank for families in need. On the same site, the Firewood Bank delivers 70 cords of firewood to over 100 families in need each year. Projects include firewood splitting & stacking, kindling splitting & boxing, planting vegetable starts, weeding & preparing beds for planting, removing invasive plants & clearing pathways, harvesting crops from hoop houses & replanting hoop house crops, preparing greenhouses for planting, building benches, repairing hoop house covers, repairing wire fences and gates and spring cleanup.
Orting: Washington Soldier’s Home – Comcasters based in Puyallup are excited to be partnering again this year with the Washington Soldiers Home in Orting. A wide variety of projects are planned including multiple painting projects, landscaping, headstone cleaning and some light construction.
Oso: Oso Whitehorse Trail – Employees from the Lynnwood and Everett call centers will work on projects at the Oso Whitehorse Trail. The team will be enhancing the Whitehorse Trail for public use (walking, bicycling, horseback riding, etc.) Duties include, weeding, removing brush from the trail, and pruning overgrowth. Our event will allow the maintenance team to gravel the 27 mile trail between Arlington and Darrington.
Puyallup: Puyallup Playcare Center – Volunteers from our Fife call center will give this nearly 50-year-old institution some TLC. There will be painting and landscaping to beautify this facility, which serves nearly 100 children at any given time
Seattle: Rainier Beach Bridge to Beach Spring Clean – Comcast will partner with the Rainier Valley Chamber of Commerce, City of Seattle Dept. of Neighborhoods, the Rainier Beach High School and multiple neighborhood groups to beautify a neighborhood the Census reported one of the most diverse zip codes in the country. We will revitalize a main arterial by landscaping 130 trees, coordinate two student-designed community murals, beautify local, beloved store fronts, and clean up a variety of landscapes from a beach to alleys, school grounds to parks, and more.
Read how the International Examiner described the scope of the volunteering.
Spokane: West Central Neighborhood Cleanup – The West Central neighborhood spans from the Spokane River, north to Indiana Ave and West to Monroe St. Throughout the neighborhood there will be various projects ranging from trash removal (small and large materials), painting, landscaping, gardening (including building planter boxes, tilling and leveling grounds), and revamping local businesses including the West Central Community Center.
Meantime, a variety of other, smaller events are planned at Comcast offices. There are several blood drives planned. And the Comcast Women’s Network in partnership with VetNet and the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Snohomish County will partner to create fleece blankets for women in need in Pierce County.
This year, the Company expects more than 100,000 Comcast and NBCUniversal volunteers to participate in more than 800 projects across the country and around the globe. To date, volunteers have contributed more than 4 million service hours to improve nearly 7,000 projects in the U.S. and around the world since Comcast Cares Day started in 2001.
The Comcast Foundation will also provide grants to local community partner organizations across the country on behalf of everyone who volunteers on Comcast Cares Day. The grants will help Comcast’s community partners continue their mission of serving the community throughout the year. To date, the Comcast Foundation has awarded more than $18 million in grants to local non-profit organizations who have partnered with us on Comcast Cares Day.
Additionally, this Comcast Cares Day the Company is folding in the broad support and amplification of two other Company partnerships: Global Citizen, who organize the annual music and advocacy-focused Global Citizen Festival curated by Coldplay’s Chris Martin that has aired on MSNBC for the past few years, and Red Nose Day, a special television event with top musical and comedy performances that debuted on NBC last year. These initiatives aim to end extreme poverty, fight inequality and injustice, and tackle climate change globally and in the United States. By amplifying our support of these initiatives on Comcast Cares Day, Comcast NBCUniversal is providing additional ways to help drive positive change in our communities.
Comcast has been committed to serving local communities since our founding more than 50 years ago. For more information on Comcast NBCUniversal volunteer and community investment initiatives, visit www.comcast.com/community.
Here is the PSA for this effort in 2016: