The National Center for Children and Families has one man in charge of landscaping and maintaining its entire Greentree Road campus.
It’s a tall order and prime example of how the shelter for teen boys and single mothers with kids relies on the help of the community. About 90 Capital One Bank employees arrived at the facility on Friday to help dig trenches, mulch a playground, clean out storage and finish a number of other to-do items.
“Before I came here the kids used to know want the bus to come on campus and now they’re not ashamed to live here,” said NCCF Executive Director Dr. Sheryl Brissett Chapman. “It’s all because we keep it looking like Bethesda. Grooming it takes money and resources and we don’t have that. So the community really is the keeper of the facilities.
“They convey to our families and our kids whose families can’t take care of them and rejected them, that we care about you,” Chapman said. “Having them come and just kind of claim this place so empowers our families and kids. It means the community cares about them and expects them to be able to have a good life, get themselves together, learn how to parent, learn how to transition into adulthood and be rewarded for that.”
Capital One’s nationwide volunteer week just so happened to coincide with Montgomery County’s Community Service Week. County Executive Isiah Leggett spoke to the volunteers Friday.
“If you are good at what you do in your job and you value your job, then obviously you value the community and the people that you serve,” Leggett said. “The government simply can not provide all the services we need and we must rely on our nonprofit partners to fill in the gap.”
It was the first large volunteer project Capital One had done at NCCF, according to Leanne Posko, Capital One’s senior manager of community relations for the Mid-Atlantic region.
“They are so thrilled to be able to come out and it’s always a lot of fun when we can get the executives out of the office,” Posko said.
By the end of the week, Posko said around 2,200 Capital One associates will have completed various volunteer activities.
