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Health & Fitness

Volunteers to work at Arc's Value Village in Richfield 4/27/13 during National Volunteer Week

To celebrate National Volunteer Week, host of volunteers will lend a helping hand on April 27 at Arc's Value Village in Richfield for "Comcast Cares Day."

For area homeowners, weekends in April are often set aside for spring cleaning.  The story is quite the same for Twin Cites nonprofits who need help with landscape clean-up, sorting and pitching, painting, general fix-up and more at their respective facilities.  And Comcast is reaching out to lend a helping hand.    

Gary Schulte is building his volunteer team at Comcast.  He is serving as project site coordinator for Comcast Cares Day on Saturday, April 27, and is leading a team on an ambitious community project that includes Arc’s Value Village Thrift Store & Donation Center in Richfield (6528 Penn Avenue S.) He and other site coordinators will lead more than 1,600 Comcast employees, their families and friends for a morning of volunteering for more than three dozen nonprofits in the Twin Cities area during National Volunteer Week.  This year marks the company’s 12th annual event, with more than 70,000 volunteers expected at over 600 locations in Comcast communities around the country. 

Rallying around this year’s theme, “Making Change Happen,” Comcast Cares
Day is widely recognized as the nation’s largest single-day volunteer
effort.  

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“Our energetic crews can concentrate on a single job for the morning and accomplish amazing things,” said Schulte a technical operations supervisor at Comcast.   His team has been asked to sort donations such as clothing, accessories, housewares, books and toys at Arc’s Value Village.

“Our employees look forward to Comcast Cares Day each year because they’re excited to volunteer with local social service organizations whose programs are key to the stability and health of the communities where we live and work,” said Mary Beth Schubert, Comcast’s vice president of corporate affairs. “We’ve partnered with a number of these organizations for more than a decade.” 

Find out what's happening in Richfieldwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Budgets continue to be tight for nonprofits. They are busy serving their clients and welcome extra help with clean-up and the kinds of chores that are difficult to get around to doing.

“We take special care to make sure our projects are well planned and fully staffed
with volunteers who are ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work,” added
Schubert.  “And we are particularly excited about this year’s Comcast Cares Day as the company celebrates its 50th anniversary.”

At three dozen separate non-profit sites, Comcast employees will landscape, power wash, paint, sort donations, restock warehouses and food shelves, install garage doors, deep-clean kitchens, and more.  

Since its beginnings in 2001, Comcast Cares Day nationally has contributed 2.6
million volunteer hours and $12 million to local non-profit organizations.  The company is expecting to top the three-million hour mark in volunteer participation with this year’s event, and will expand internationally with the participation by NBCUniversal employees at various project sites in London and France.

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