MANSFIELD — Shelly Pfleidrer and about 10 other employees of Rinehart-Walters-Danner Insurance spent the day Friday painting buildings and creating partitions for the residents’ privacy for Harmony House Homeless Services.
They, along with 25 other companies, were partaking in the United Ways’ Day of Caring.
“Last year, we allowed some of our staff to volunteer, and this year they allowed those who didn’t do it last year to come in and do it,” Pfleidrer said. “We’re just all volunteering our time to help in the community.”
The Day of Caring is a work-day event allowing community-minded volunteers to partner with local-non profit agencies and businesses in need of help.
Vicki Kane, CEO of Harmony House, said she enjoys the extra help she gets because many of the necessary projects would remain incomplete without the fleet of volunteers.
“We have such a wonderful community; people come out and help with big projects like this that we can’t afford to pay someone to do,” Kane said. “This particular project they are working on today is for people formerly living in Harmony House and are now living in these units. It was looking so shabby. We really needed to clean it up.”
Kane said with the community doing so much work with Land Bank lots — one adjacent to the agency — she felt an extra need to keep up with their properties and keep it as nice as they could.
“We have such wonderful volunteers; they’re just really great. We didn’t have tools, supplies, and they went and purchased what we needed,” Kane continued. “It really helps out a lot.”
Harmony House is so fortunate to be a part of the United Way and the wonderful caring, concerned people of the community. I didn’t grow up here, but I am so grateful to live here. It’s a great city
Across the street was Steven Roof of Ohio Edison Energy shaping bushes and doing landscaping work for The Renaissance Theater.
“We’re volunteering our time; trying to give back to the community some,” he said. “Two of us are outside doing landscaping work and a bunch of us are inside painting and stuff.”
Roof said he was happy to help the Ren because his company believes it is important to spruce up the community.
“They’re just trying to improve their look as people drive up (to the theater), and that’s what we’re trying to do out here,” he said “Inside they are just giving them some donated labor that don’t normally get finished up or anything.
“It’s nice to volunteer for the community and give time back a little bit.”
