It's a "Day on, not Off" for volunteers
They traded surgical gloves for gardening gloves, lab coats for sweaters: a team of Kaiser Permanente Redwood City volunteers took to Stulsaft Park in Redwood City to provide some TLC to the environment on the Dr. Martin Luther King Junior Day of Service.
And on this particular day of rehabilitating the park, the Kaiser Permanente team got some re-enforcements from the office of local Assembly member Kevin Mullin.
They and the Kaiser Permanente team got rid of invasive plants, helped replant native species, and did some heavier-duty type gardening in Stulsaft Park.
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The Assembly member himself showed he wasn’t above some heavy-duty gardening: he was seen in his checked work-shirt digging a trench in the park to provide drainage for run-off rainwater. No comment about the absence of much-needed rain this winter.
"Kaiser Permanente chose a great place to celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on a National Day of Service," said Assembly member Mullin. "My staff and I had a great time getting our hands dirty working at Stulsaft park - a tremendous community resource in Redwood City.”
Find out what's happening in Redwood City-Woodsidewith free, real-time updates from Patch.
This is the second year that the Kaiser Permanente Redwood City volunteers have worked in Stulsaft Park on the MLK Holiday.
“At Kaiser Permanente, this a “Day On, Not Off,” said Maureen O’Brien, the KP Redwood City Hospital’s Chief Operating Officer volunteering at Stulsaft. “Part of Kaiser Permanente’s mission is to improve the health of the communities where we work: this is one way.”
Indeed, historic documents show Dr. King believed that part of the path to equality was through improving rundown neighborhoods. So for Kaiser Permanente volunteer teams were working on the holiday doing community improvement projects all over Northern California, the state, and the nation.
The Redwood City team partnered with Hands On Bay Area, a volunteer project facilitator, and Actera, a non-profit overseeing local parks.
Other Kaiser Permanente teams in Santa Clara County rehabilitated a homeless shelter, see photos at
http://photos.mercurynews.com/2014/01/20/photos-life-of-martin-luther-king-jr-honored-with-parades-programs-service/#1
And a Kaiser Permanente MLK Day Project in Alameda County was captured on KGO-TV: http://bit.ly/1dR5Pay
