March 2015 – Turning a Vacant Lot into Community Space

The weather wreaked havoc for everyone in Baltimore on Saturday and made things difficult for our service events. But it was a second Saturday and we were determined to get out there and make Baltimore better in one way or another. We wound up needing to cancel one of the events and we will reschedule that one. The other one we had scheduled was with The 6th Branch (T6B).

T6B is an organization started by veterans of the military and they have made it their job to go around Baltimore cleaning up some of the worst areas of the city and leaving behind open spaces, gardens and playgrounds. They got their name because there are 5 branches of the military and they see what they do sort of as military service. Instead of serving abroad, they are serving their own communities. Their impact in Baltimore can be seen in many neighborhoods.

It was a muddy day for us, but as usual, our volunteers didn’t seem to mind the conditions at all. We spent our time cleaning up and clearing out a vacant lot. There were tree stumps in the ground that needed to be removed and we used shovels, axes and our bare hands to remove them. We cleaned up trash, removed branches and uprooted tree stumps. When we were done, we had a pile of about 30 trash bags of stuff that was all sitting on that lot just three hours before. It was so cool to see all the progress we made in such a short period of time. We had a blast with T6B and we can’t wait to volunteer with them again!