Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: what are you doing for others?”
It was one week ago today that we hosted a large event for Martin Luther King Jr Day. We are so excited to share the success of our MLK day of service–it was one of our most successful volunteer work parties yet! As our City Fruit team planned the special work project for MLK Day this year, we kept in mind our main goal of expanding the amount of work that we can do, caring for as many fruit trees as we can, and ultimately bringing the fruit back to our community during the harvest season.
We were buzzing with excitement at the opportunity to host two active community groups, the UW Husky Leadership Initiative and Projectline Inc. Each of these groups has created positive change within their organization and their enthusiasm was easy to recognize!
As volunteers came rolling into the orchard, we divided into groups, grabbed some tools, and conquered a couple of big projects. The Amy Yee Tennis Center Orchard has over 30 fruit trees with significant history to the South Seattle area. With over 75 volunteers with a combined 269 volunteer hours logged, our groups enthusiastically got to work clearing thorny blackberries, scotch broom, and other invasive weeds out from the base of the fruit trees. We were especially impressed with the efforts of our young stewards of the day who picked up fallen apples and planted young fruit trees in the newly cleared space!
The Amy Yee Tennis Center is now looking better than ever and we are excited for the prospects of this orchard for the 2015 harvest season. Thank you to everyone who came out and helped make this event a success for City Fruit. This was truly an inspiring group of volunteers and we are excited for the continued success of our future work parties!