Love Chico 2011

Love Chico is such an amazing opportunity for organizations in our area. It really shows what can be done when people come together and pitch in to make a significant difference. We at the Torres Community Shelter really appreciate Love Chico and all the wonderful people involved! Many amazing things have been accomplished throughout the years thanks to Love Chico. This year we'd like to thank several organizations that helped out on that special day. Thank you to the Salvation Army for the new bark and people to lay it out. Thank you Bidwell Presbyterian for making our kitchen sparkle. Thank you SGB Painting for all your hard work--the walls look great! Finally, thanks to EVERYONE that makes a difference on that day and every day!

Love Chico 2010

Painting the Shelter—The Torres Community Shelter is only financially viable because of the huge heart of our community. Financial gifts, donations of in-kind services and volunteerism make it possible for us to provide our services to our guests without charge. In late September, we painted the Shelter!!! This is a fantastic example of the point I’d like to make. Just this project could have cost us thousands and thousands of dollars—we were only able to afford to do this because:

1. Love Chico took us on as one of their projects and helped us connect with many generous individuals and companies that helped make this happen! Love Chico—what a fantastic program. Please check out their website at www.lovechico.org to look all the wonderful projects they accomplished this year.
2. The Hignell Companies volunteered professional expertise helping us prep, make a timeline, and know what we were doing in getting ready for this project. Thank you Marilyn Dunford for being our contact. 
3. Through Love Chico, Olli’s Pressure Washing came out and cleaned the whole building at no charge.
4. Through Love Chico, Ministry Living provided professionals that helped us with caulking, repairing stucco and the actual painting.
5. Sherwin Williams donated much of the paint and most of the supplies we needed for the project.
6. There were other Shelter staff people involved, but Brian and James took on the responsibility for ensuring that we stayed on our timeline for all  the prep work and had everything ready to paint when it was time. Ed Mannion was our primary contact with Love Chico and he did a great job finding donated materials and labor for so many of the pieces that made this project a success.
7. Jim O’Bannon always finds ways to support the Shelter and has been doing so since before I arrived here. He prefers to stay out of the limelight and so sometimes we don’t know he’s behind the scenes helping us. I happened to notice that a fair amount of the equipment we used had his name on it. Thanks Jim.
8. Louise Meyerfeld is our Shelter Supervisor. She’s out right now with a medical issue. We miss her and are looking forward to her return, Even though she wasn’t here to see much of the work get done, the planning she did with John Schleh from our Board and others is responsible for how smooth the project went.
9. Turf King has been providing our landscaping for years at no charge to us. For this project, they trimmed all of our bushes back far enough so that we could get in there to paint and adjusted our sprinklers so we wouldn’t damage our paint job.
10. Hunter’s Pest Control came in and sprayed for ants, etc. The paint we chose, fixing the foundation cracks and caulking—all of this was not only for appearance, but also because we have had an ant issue at the Shelter. We’re hoping that the attention to detail on this project, as well as the no charge services of Hunter’s Pest Control will resolve that issue once and for all.
11. We also had some additional volunteers arrive that we didn’t need for painting. Instead of leaving when we told them we had enough people to paint, they decided to stay and help with some of our gardening and weeding. Thank you.
12. And then we have our guests—for three days we had several guests helping us prep for “paint day”. To do a professional quality job,  a lot of prep work needed to be done. It may sound like a small detail, but trust me that it wasn’t. The professional painters showed up to volunteer at 8 am and were so pleasantly surprised that they could start right away because the guests and the staff made sure we were ready!
     

So there you have it, one relatively small project and I could probably list 50-100 people that were responsible in one way or another for getting the entire Shelter painted in 5 hours. I LOVE CHICO! And the rest of the County! And I love the folks at Love Chico! I understand that some of this detail might seem dry, but honestly this type of project that involves our staff, volunteers from the community and our guests really motivates me.  We could have thrown paint on our exterior walls fairly easily, but what we accomplished was a professional, coordinated project that was well-planned and implemented. Thank you to everyone involved. —Brad Montgomery