Good Deed: MLK Day 2010
One of my jobs here at Mudbug Media is to organize our ongoing volunteer efforts. What began as an effort to do 10 Good Deeds in 2009 to celebrate our 10th year of existence has carried over into 2010. To kick off the New Year, volunteers from the Mudbug Media team rolled up our sleeves, pulled on our work gloves and helped clean up Lafayette Cemetery No. 1.
Connecting
We decided to turn our day off for Martin Luther King Day into a day of service. When I started looking around for ways we could give back to the New Orleans community, I turned to a great organization called HandsOn New Orleans, which has connected over 17,000 volunteers to recovery and restoration efforts across the Gulf Coast since 2005.
I chose the Save Our Cemeteries cleanup event since I knew we were going to have a large group and the event seemed tailor made for our needs. I also know how important cemeteries are to the identity and history of New Orleans.
Digging in
Despite a lingering fear of zombies and the prospect of getting dirty, 28 Mudbug Media employees answered the call for volunteers on Martin Luther King Day. We spent the morning pulling weeds, raking up leaves from between the graves, hauling trash bags full of debris to the dumpsters and trimming branches from the cemetery’s many oak trees.
Check out some pictures of our employees hard at work.
Giving Back
While the work was hard and the day was unusually warm, it felt really good to be able to lend a hand. The cemetery was swarming with fellow volunteers from local universities and groups of tourists from across the country and I think everyone had a good time.
By lunchtime, the historic cemetery was in much better shape than we found it. Graves were clean and tidy, we all got a little sun, no zombies had escaped and we all felt a little bit better for helping preserve a bit of New Orleans on our day off.
