More than 1,300 people from 56 businesses, nonprofit organizations, union labor groups and higher education institutions spent yesterday volunteering as part of the United Way of Central Massachusetts’ annual Day of Caring.
Volunteers visited more than 100 locations across the city and Worcester area, volunteering their time to clean up sites, paint, landscape or do other needed work at various schools, public housing developments and community areas in the region.
Around lunchtime, more than 500 of the volunteers gathered at Saint Vincent’s Hospital in downtown Worcester for lunch and a performance by the Anna Maria College Marching Band.(Click here to view a video of the band’s performance.)
Anna Maria also took home an award for supplying the most volunteers of any of the dozens of organizations that volunteered workers for the event.
“This is our mission,” Anna Maria College President Jack Calareso said.
Calereso said people often ask him how the school finds more than 300 students and faculty to volunteer around the city. His response: The school, which is located in Paxton, enrolls and hires them. Anna Maria, he said, makes a concerted effort to enroll students and hire faculty that have a sense of community.Â
