Day of Action at the Urban Farm - Media Story

Once again we welcomed multiple waves of volunteers for 2 days of service in conjunction with the United Way of Greater Dayton's Volunteer Connection. Here's just one of the 3 projects we hosted on Friday (6/10/11).

Workers trade printers for pitchforks: wdtn.com

Today's lesson: Teeth

Everyone needs to learn how to clean their teeth properly! And this is just what Katie, our volunteer, did for the pre-school and school-age classrooms. And oh how the kids LOVED it! Having this oral health lesson for our kids fits into our goal of being healthy and staying healthy. And this includes caring for those teeth!

Katie had a display with her as well as examples to show the children how unhealthy food can rot your teeth and how eating apples and drinking milk will make your teeth stronger. Using peanut butter and juice as an example in the pre-school room, she got the children to have fun and learn at the same time. A lot of the school-age children asked questions during their lesson and they learned that sugary beverages are bad for their teeth and that they should brush and floss every day.

Other pictures shown in the slideshow include our office move. A few of the administrative staff moved into new offices in the house next door so we had our wonderful volunteer Seth help us out. Bob hurt himself in the meantime, but he is a tougher man for it! I made sure to bandage him up and put him right back to work!

Thank you all for reading this post and staying dedicated to DXC! We couldn't do all that we do without you and your support! Have a blessed day!


*Betsy*
Volunteer and Community Outreach Coordinator

Busy Bees at DXC

Above are some pictures of recent volunteers and "happenings" at the Dayton Christian Center. These volunteers have truly been lifesavers! Our biggest project right now is on the East Side at the Emergency Services Program Building. This building is governed by the board that governs DXC. Along with Feed Dayton, we are making an urban farm and creating programming to go along with the garden. Please look at the pictures of Drew, our University of Dayton Grad Student and the helpers he brought on to clean up the building and surrounding area! I am going to blog more about this new initiative as we go, so be on the lookout!

We also had a group come on Saturday, March 6th to help with some spring cleaning and organization projects! That day, we had a desk built, classroom toys were sanitized, donations were inventoried and organized, and DXC looked that much brighter at the end of the day! (Some of these pictures have gone MIA, but as soon as I find out where they went, I will post them!) Throughout the past two weeks, we have also had individuals do craft projects in the classrooms, clean the kitchen, and educate our school-age room on theater, science and math.

All of the volunteers were truly a delight to have and we hope they all come back soon. The center has been so crazy the last few months and having the volunteers come here and donate their time and resources has truly been a blessing.

Signing off for now until the next free moment I can blog :)

*Betsy*
Volunteer and Community Outreach Coordinator

Volunteers Make Us Happy!

There are no words to describe the crazy two months the Dayton Christian Center has had. Changes, transitions, new staff and new volunteers are the reason this is so! Since our partnership with the "Give A Day. Get A Disney Day." program, we have had 25 new volunteers. And this month, we have another 30 volunteers signed up! Our volunteers have done a wonderful job helping in our kitchen and classroom. We also now have two beautiful scrapbooks and two excel referral databases which will help us for years to come. Recently, we have a very gracious volunteer from Kentucky who helped us out. Between her and her family, they worked for 98 hours to make us beautiful quilts to use in our classrooms! Even her granddaughter helped out. We can't say thank you enough for all the hard work our volunteers have done for us at DXC. We hope they all come back to volunteer again.

If you are interested in being a part of this program or are interested in just coming to volunteer with us, please contact Betsy at (937) 275-7174. We have volunteer activities for all ages!

Miamisburg Christian Church Youth

A BIG Thank you to the Miamisburg Christian Church youth groups that spent 2 whole days at our center. The kids loved having you here and the Staff love having your passion and helping hands around. Your donation of mulch for the toddler playground was a wonderful surprise. Now the kids aren't covered in dirt and mud when they go out for their outside adventures. We hope that you had a much fun as we did!!! Looking forward to many more days and adventures with your group!

Camp Extreme from Camp Kirkwood

Camp Extreme from Camp Kirkwood - This was their day of volunteering at DXC.

United Way Day of Action 2009

A BIG "Thank You!" goes to the UPS group who spent the entire day working at the Dayton Christian Center's West campus. They started at 7:45a raking the playground area that had been tilled the night before in preparation for the sod to be laid. Raking was a necessary step to get rid of the rocks. Who needs a rocky playground surface? :-)

As more UPS employees showed up, more work began on the side garden where we use to have a veggie garden. Now, it was waist high with weeds and it had been decided that wildflowers needed to be planted there to attract butterflies and certain birds. We'll see how that turns out. Our preschool classroom will keep us updated and is in charge of watering the new plants.

The group then moved onto the front the building where the thistles had taken over. And when I say take over... that was almost an understatement. No seriously... again waist high. Now you can actually see all the pretty flowers again and hopefully the new ones that were planted a few weeks ago will continue to creep (they're suppose to do that) and grow.

Back to the playground. (and and they did eat and rest sometime during the day which gave me - Sarah - the opportunity to talk with them about the Dayton Christian Center and all the fun things we have going on) We had 5 1/2 pallets of sod delivered and oops... it turned out to not be enough to cover the entire area we had planned on. So, plan B... moved some pieces around and ordered some more playground mulch. By 3:00, all weeds were removed, some locks were installed, some doors were rehung, sod laid, sprinklers running, mulch spread... and some fun ensued (ie. adults swinging on the swings and playing tag).

We made some new friends of the Dayton Christian Center and are hoping that the UPS employees will stay in touch. The kids can't WAIT to play on the new grass (they have to wait 3 LONG weeks to make sure it takes). Thanks again to the United Way for creating days like this to help out for BIG projects!!!

Here are just some of the pictures that were taken during the day!

Can You See Us Now?

The Dayton Christian Center has only one identifier. This sign: which is flat up on the building and even though it's pretty big, well... it's kinda hard to see until you pass by.

That changed a few weekends ago when a group of 5 volunteers from Wright State University took on the challenge of re-painting our current sign and adding not one, but two new signs. All in hopes of making it a not so "man, now I need to turn around because I just drove by" place. :-)

This took place over 2 days. The first day was a super beautiful Saturday in which the students started with this:

and turned it into this:
They not only did the new sign, but refreshed the one on the building and repainted it. We can't thank these students enough for their hard work!