Corporate Volunteer Day Thursday, 30 June 2022
By Grainne B Furlong
Team L’Oreal volunteers arrived at the Green Project main site in Shepherds Bush, full of heightened energy and enthusiasm and ready to flex their muscles to help in the Green Project Gardens. After the introductions, Dermot (chief volunteer from Idverde) went through the Health and Safety procedures –with special emphasis on the best way to hold various tools and equipment so as not to take out their fellow volunteers or themselves.
Work to be carried out varied from digging trenches, weeding, planting, and a myriad of other garden tasks. Volunteers were divided into three groups and allocated to a particular site.
On the day ‘trainee carpenters’ created three spectacular triangular planters made of wood which were placed in each of the sites under the excellent supervision of fellow carpenters Dermot and Alan.
Volunteers got cracking and set to work - making helpful suggestions which were quickly adopted.
It took three burley volunteers to remove large, well-established tree roots. If that team didn’t have muscles up to then, they certainly had them at the end of this task!
The completed trenches were jokingly referred to as the graves, especially with the strong scent of compost wafting about them, which had earlier been added to the trenches. Late rumours were that this compost will now be used as the main ingredient in L’Oreal’s new natural organic range of cosmetics.
Other volunteers set to trimming large branches with secateurs and later sawed them into manageable pieces for recycling, wild areas were tidied up, and flowers were planted. Four small holes were dug out, filled with concrete and a chair then positioned and secured into the cement.
Later five volunteers were transferred to a fourth site a short distance away where they also did a sterling job transferring that garden into a wonderful gardening space.
A big thank you to the mysterious person who donated two trays of flowers for planting which are now happily sparkling throughout the gardens.
However, no one volunteered for the exceptionally challenging task of cleaning the toilet specially brought in from the Glastonbury festival. This was the only task, which was uncompleted, but can you blame them??!!!
Altogether it was a brilliant day with all tasks carried out perfectly.
Many thanks, Team L’Oreal
The Green Project Volunteers.
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