Project 2012

This Saturday, February 25, 2012, Texas Spirits participated in Project 2012. This event is put on by the University of Texas at Austin to be a day of service involving a large portion of the UT community.

A group of Texas Spirits signed up to help clean up a youth center in South Austin. However, the site had more volunteers than it needed, so the Spirits were relocated to another project site. Our new task was removing debris from abandoned houses in the Austin community and helping residents with gardening projects.

The first house the Spirits visited was very eventful! This house had been abandoned and had lots of leaves and large branches in the yard. Spirits worked with other volunteers to help clean up the house’s yard. In the backyard, they stumbled upon a wild chicken! After a mild panic, Spirits decided to work around their newfound friend while they raked up all the leaves and collected all of the large branches from the backyard. After finishing their work, they all agreed that the house looked so much better and named their “mascot” chicken Hubert.

The next two houses that the Spirits visited were homes to residents of the Austin community. The families greeted the Spirits with sandwiches, chips, and sodas upon their arrival. Lunch is not something that the residents are required to provide so the consideration and hospitality of the families made the Spirits feel very welcome. The families’ toddlers even decided to lend a helping hand as the Spirits planted flowers and bushes and spread mulch.

This day of service was such a fun and rewarding experience for the Texas Spirits. Weenies got to meet a couple more Actives and bond with each other! As one of the Project 2012 volunteer leaders said to us, “I hope you all learned a valuable lesson today. That it’s awesome to do good.”