By Ceoli Jacoby
Local businesses, community members and university-affiliated student groups on Saturday participated in the ninth annual Good Neighbor Day – an event centered on community service, education and togetherness in Greater College Park.
Good Neighbor Day – which is hosted by The University of Maryland, The City of College Park, and The Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission– began as a Christmas-in-April event in 2011 with just 50 volunteers, according to a Nov. 3 press release. Since then, it has become a tradition that attracts hundreds of city residents, students and alumni every year.
According to Golshan Jalali, media and digital communications coordinator for the Office of Community Engagement, last year’s event drew nearly a thousand volunteers to its 20 unique service opportunities. Projects usually focus on environmental beautification of public spaces including local schools and parks. However, this year was different.
“Like a lot of things with COVID, we did have to reevaluate and reimagine about how we could put on Good Neighbor Day in a safe and limited sort of limited capacity,” Jalali said.
After they were forced to cancel Good Neighbor Day in April, the initiative’s planning committee went to work on devising a way to enforce public health measures, such as masking and social distancing, at its most popular in-person projects. A strict set of protocols developed by the fall semester would be a prerequisite to any plans of rescheduling.
Accordingly, each volunteer on Saturday received a complimentary Good Neighbor Day mask, pair of gloves and bottle of hand sanitizer along with the traditional yellow T-shirt.
Volunteers were restricted to groups of no more than 10, and each project had a maximum capacity that was proportional to its scope, Jalali said.
Over 100 individuals signed up to volunteer at eight in-person service projects, according to Jose Cadiz, lead coordinator for the Office of Community Engagement. From 9 a.m. to 12 p.m., groups worked to remove invasive species of plants, clean up litter and maintain gardens at locations around the city.
In addition to these projects, there was a food drive to benefit the UMD Campus Pantry and the College Park Community Food Bank from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m at the local IKEA.
“Food insecurity has become an even greater challenge during this pandemic, so that’s another way that we want to be able to support our neighbors,” Jalali said.
The drive was made possible by a partnership with the Student Athlete Advisory Committee, which provided over 60 volunteers to sort and pack nonperishable food items. Max Myers, a sophomore track and field athlete who also serves on the committee, said it went better than he had hoped.
“We probably ended up packing three whole vans with food, so I’d say it was pretty successful,” Myers said.
The expressions of goodwill did not end with in-person service – Paisano’s College Park is holding a special on large pizzas all weekend and will donate a portion of the proceeds to the two food drive beneficiaries. Community members can also make monetary donations to one or both beneficiaries online.
There were also 13 virtual workshops covering topics ranging from financial literacy to youth mental health in the time of COVID-19.
“Something that’s very familiar and has been proven over these last nine months to be effective for participation and attendance is Zoom,” said Cadiz.
Sixty-six people opted to attend only a virtual event and volunteers for the in-person service projects also had the opportunity to participate in the Zoom workshops. Overall, nearly 100 people attended virtual workshops between 9:30 a.m. and 5 p.m.
“Although Good Neighbor Day [looked] different this year, the mission [remained] the same,” said Gloria Aparicio Blackwell, director of UMD’s Office of Community Engagement. “We are proud of its impact and the resources it provides to our shared community,”
Featured photo courtesy of Max Myers