COMCorps,
Glouster residents unite to “Make a Difference”
OU-COM and
community work together in day of community service

Members of OU-COM’s Community Health
Programs’ AmeriCorps program, COMCorps, spent Saturday,
Oct. 24, building raised garden beds at the Glouster Community
Gardens.
Photo by Victor J Blue
By Richard Heck
Oct. 26, 2009
(GLOUSTER,
Ohio)—OU-COM and Glouster community volunteers joined forces
Saturday for national Make a Difference Day in the
northern Athens County village.
Nearly three
dozen people spent a cloudy Saturday morning building 12 new raised
beds for the Glouster Community Gardens. This doubled the number of
raised beds available for Glouster residents to grow vegetables.
The effort was
led by OU-COM’s COMCorps organization, an AmeriCorps program run by
the college’s Community Health Programs. Among other agencies
represented were Community Food Initiatives (CFI), CFI’s Red Hot
Pepper 4-H Club and Tri-County Community Action Agency
“Community
gardens are a way for people to get exercise and grow affordable
food,” said Patty Nally, a COMCorps volunteer.
The community
gardens are located on a hill overlooking the Glouster Police
Station and Tri-County Community Action Agency, which owns the
surrounding 14 acres.
The raised
beds are necessary because the site was once a brick factory, and
the compact clay soil still contains bits of brick and stone, said
Bob Garbo, Tri-County executive director who joined in the efforts
on Saturday to help build the garden beds. The Tri-County complex
also hosts some of OU-COM’s Free Clinic health screenings throughout
the year.
Using scrap
slabs of timber donated by an area saw mill, the volunteers built
each raised bed and filled them with donated soil. Others spent the
morning weeding and preparing the gardens for next year’s crop, and
harvesting the last of the carrots, onions and peppers grown this
summer.
“We’re just
getting a jump on next year,” said Shirley Hopstetter, a VISTA
volunteer with the Southeast Regional Food Center.
Created by
USA Weekend Magazine, Make a Difference Day is a national day of
volunteerism that celebrates neighbors working together to improve
their communities.
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