POTTSTOWN >> If you stopped by the Pottstown YMCA on Saturday, you probably noticed you were surrounded by a sea of green.
More than 100 volunteers showed up Saturday morning donning green T-shirts in celebration of Earth Day as they came to do come cleaning up around the facility.
“We’re coming here to give back to the community,” said Vincent Miller site leader for the project. “This is a Comcast Cares event which is done every year. We’re going to be averaging about 100 to 110 people that are showing up and we’re going to be doing some mulching, doing some painting, cleaning up and doing some outside landscaping work.”
Volunteers shuffled in at around 8 a.m. Saturday where they were met with catered breakfast and an introduction to the tasks they would be completing. They were then sent off into teams to complete their tasks, including painting one of the YMCA’s hallways, clearing trash out from the facility’s basement and doing yard work around the edges of the property.
Although the project is in its 16th year, this year is the first that Comcast has chosen the YMCA, 724 N. Adams St., as a location for the project. Every year, the effort travels to different facilities and non-profits to participate in a day of giving back.
“I picked this site and the facility’s manager, Shawn Ryan, basically picked out what projects needed to be done and we went through and tried to see what we could accomplish today,” said Miller.
Miller added that about 90 percent of the volunteers are Comcast employees and that many include their families in the yearly project. Families and other volunteers worked from about 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday. Other projects the company is working on for Earth Day include cleanup and service efforts in West Conshohocken, Ambler, Harleysville, Flourtown and Horsham.
“It’s been amazing,” said Shawn Ryan, facilities director for the Pottstown YMCA. “The fact that we had so many people volunteer to come help us out is great. The YMCA is based off of family, friendship relationships so to have so many people spend their Saturday coming out to give us a hand and help us out with cleaning up the facility, we just love it. We couldn’t appreciate it any more.”
