Day 20: Interior Painting

By Laura Carpenter

Day 20 of 30 Days of Kindness was originally scheduled to be a day where we paint over graffiti around Oneonta, however, the weather was not cooperating. It snowed all day and was far too wet and cold to do any outdoor painting. Paint doesn't adhere to surfaces or dry under such conditions. Once again, we had to think fast and make a change of plans. 

We had several high school aged volunteers lined up to help us with this AoK, and we didn't want to send them away. We remembered that we had plenty of painting to do in our own building that needed to get done for the Good Friday Grand Opening (in T-minus 10 days!), so we proposed to the volunteers that, if they were still eager to do something, they could do an AoK for us and paint our trim and our kitchenette walls. Thankfully, they were eager to help!

Four students and two supervisors came by and lent us a hand. In two hours they painted all of the baseboards of the entire church that still needed to be installed, and they even painted the kitchenette. It would have taken us several days to do what they did in two hours. It was fantastic! It felt great to be the recipient of kindness and we wholeheartedly praised the volunteers, thanked them, and fed them cookies.

We have learned from doing these AoK's that there are many individuals and groups around town that enjoy volunteering and that are eager to help. It has been encouraging to see others who don't even know us, learn about our 30 Days of Kindness and want to get involved. This particular group of volunteers cannot be mentioned by name due to privacy issues, but you know who you are and we once again say thank you!