Last Friday, September 20^th, 2013 East African Community Services hosted a United Way Day of Caring. Nearly twenty Nordstrom employees left the comfort of their desks, trading in their keyboards for shovels, and  desk phones for paint, in order to clean, organize, decorate, weed, and harvest at the EACS office and community garden.

The morning kicked off with pastries generously donated by Columbia City Bakery. After harnessing their sugar buzz the volunteers set off to work, one team taking on the community garden, another sizing up the supply closet.

Volunteers dig into pastries donated by Columbia City Bakery before digging into the garden.

Whether they were inside the office or outside in the garden both teams got their hands dirty to help EACS.

In the garden volunteers dug deep to remove a summer’s worth of weeds. They also pruned plants, harvested vegetables, and uncovered and re-arranged rocks painted by participants in this year’s Summer Learning Program.

Work begins in the EACS community garden.

The finished product, no weeds and plenty of room for fall planting!

Inside the rest of the volunteers organized EACS’s supply closet, discovering a wealth of goodies to use in our upcoming After School Program. The volunteers also channeled their creativity, decorating the EACS computer lab and setting up activity stations to make the space more welcoming and interactive for our youth program participants. Come check it out!

We would like to extend a very special thank you to everyone from Nordstrom who volunteered and to United Way for making it happen. Thank you!

Our wonderful group of Nordstrom volunteers pose beneath their “hand” crafted rainbow in the EACS office.