Aiming to Make a Week Last All Year

After Volunteers in Annual Cleanup Depart, Manassas Residents Pick Up Their Brooms

The Week of Hope program that brought more than 1,300 students to Manassas this summer may be over, but the work the volunteers did is not lost as residents take up the effort to build a better community.

"The Week of Hope has never really ended," said Kisha Wilson-Sogunro, Manassas's neighborhood services coordinator. "The volunteers who came in this summer did exactly what we wanted them to do: empower community residents to clean up after themselves and keep the effort going."

For seven weeks, students from across the country and from Canada rotated through Manassas to clean up a city plagued by vacant housing. The students, ages 14 to 25, did tasks that included planting flowers, pulling weeds, hauling trash, painting fences and taking down old decks. They put in 15,600 hours of service, saving the city, residents and organizations almost $320,300, Wilson-Sogunro said.

"It's so nice to know there are people out there that would do all this work out of the goodness of their hearts," said resident Priscilla Saboe, who cooked dinner for 70 of the volunteers after they took down her deck and cleaned up the yard. "They made such an impression on me and were so warm and kind."

This was the third year of the program, and although Manassas residents have helped sporadically in the past, this is the first time they have joined the volunteers on a broad scale and then continued the efforts, Wilson-Sogunro said. This weekend, residents painted fences and gardened along Grant Avenue.

"I think the [Week of Hope] is a cool idea, and we're happy to keep it going because we have a responsibility to help out our community," said Manassas Assembly of God Pastor Doug Dreesen, who had several volunteers from his church working Saturday.

Besides various church groups, Manassas residents such as George Maghan and Alfredo Comignani have been inspired to keep the concept of the program alive in the community. Maghan said he hopes to help install wheelchair ramps in homes, and Comignani said he has no specific project in sight but will step in wherever needed.

As of Monday, all the volunteers this summer have dumped 11 truckloads of mulch, mostly to do landscaping around Manassas schools, helped 68 families with household projects, repaired and painted 25 fences and planted 500 flowers. Wilson-Sogunro said several residents have offered to help complete at least one community project weekly until next summer, when the volunteers return.

"When I retired from IBM, I swore I wasn't going to just sit in front of the television, so volunteering will be a great way to keep busy," Maghan said. "I think Kisha really lights a fire under people and inspires everyone to get involved in their community."