It is the eighth annual Day of Caring and 14 employers had generously allowed its employees to volunteer their time and skills for this cause.
Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) workers such as Faythe Cooper and Kelsey O’Brien (no relation to the O’Brien family who owned the farm) have used their vacation time to volunteer at O’Brien’s Farm.
Cooper and O'Brien are taxpayer service agents who work at a call centre answering tax inquiries. They are two of the volunteers who came down and shoved wood chips into wheelbarrows near the hens in the chicken coop after learning about the project from a CRA staff email.
“We are fixing the garden so people from the community can come in and do their own farming,” Cooper said next to the pile of woodchips, while St. John’s Coun. Ian Froude built accessible flower beds for people with bad backs or in wheelchairs.
Cooper said she volunteers because she loves to do it and she loves to meet people.
“It is just knowing that this area is in St. John’s,”" O’Brien said. “I didn’t realize that you could come up behind the Avalon Mall and seem like you are up the shore."
O’Brien is from up the shore, where her brother does a bit of farming. She added that she was a fisherperson on her father's fishing vessel and likes to get her hands dirty.
According to Jerry Dick, the O’Brien farmland and Thimble Cottage were once owned by Aloysius (Aly) O’Brien, who loved his farm. Aly O’Brien’s family owned the farm and his last wish was to have the farm preserved. To honour him, the O’Brien Foundation was formed to care for the land.
“I never met him before he died,” Dick said as he stood on the woodchips that were being put into the garden. “I have heard so many things about him. He seems like he was a real gentle soul. He shared his knowledge, his plants. He taught people Gaelic in his room here in the house.”
United Way of Newfoundland and Labrador is a local organization that finds people in the workplace who want to volunteer and helps them form relationships with charities that need volunteer work done.
Volunteers have come forward to work on 18 different projects with 16 community groups in St. John’s and the surrounding areas, and in Carbonear and Corner Brook.
Some volunteers United Way helped find for this project include Grace Hudson, Craig Andrews, Jordan Goodwin, Greggory Butt, Krishna Iyer, Ralph Jarvis and Habib Rehman.
Rehman lived and volunteered in Montreal, Que. He has spent nine months in St. John’s and said this is his first time volunteering in the St. John’s community.
Tammy Davis, executive director of United Way Newfoundland and Labrador said, “Sometimes the workplaces actually make donations to help them with supplies, so it’s a combination of human and financial resources. … Sometimes there are financial hardships that preclude them from doing it.”
With over 160 volunteers and 18 projects to accomplish in one day, great things are possible.
“It’s going to be big in the future,” O’Brien said. “You know as soon as they put up the opportunity for people to come in and have this, it is going to be full.”
@MelissaEWong_
