Dirty Hands, Clean Land by Joey Hamood
On Monday, June 3rd, a handful of Shift Digital employees teamed up with Timberland and the local nonprofit Green Living Science (GLS) to give back to the community. The mission: help revamp the Lincoln Street Art Park – an outdoor Detroit community learning space created by GLS.
This day was far from an ordinary day at the Shift office; there was a temporary transition from laptops and website skills to work gloves and power drills. In addition to physically lending a hand, we learned more about Timberland’s passion to serve communities around the globe which led to the coordination of this event with GLS to help transform Detroit.
There were several tasks Shift Digital could choose from to assist for the day:
- Prepare a green roof for installation on the shipping container classroom
- Clean, plant, green and mulch the park
- Paint a nature-themed mural with a local street artist
- Build benches and planter boxes (this was the Shift favorite for whatever reason)
I’ll admit, our hands were shaky at first but everybody seemed to get the hang of things. We may or may not have encountered several moments of, “Hey! We put this thing on backwards”. Thankfully, no one really noticed… except a few local news channel cameras and an occasional drone operator.
If you know downtown Detroit, you know that it’s all about artistic expression and the location of Lincoln Street Art Park perfectly encompasses that downtown vibe: blue-collar work, creativity and community pride. The best part about volunteering at such an aesthetically pleasing space is knowing the cause behind your work is to helping the city while bettering the environment.
The volunteers and employees of Shift Digital may not be building any houses from scratch anytime soon, but it was pretty cool to be a part of something so positive for the community. Mission Accomplished!
*Click here to watch a short video about this event.
**Click here to learn more information about how to get involved with Green Living Science.