my FIRST build!

Here is what my boss--the Director of Project Management--wrote about my first playground build (as a lead project manager):

Build #102 this year:
Today, Hope led her first build ever – woo hoo – this was another Week of Service build with The Home Depot. The build was with Northside Leadership Conference in Pittsburgh, PA. The day started with Hope and Whitney arriving at the site at 5:45. During the kick-off, Hope led the hokie pokie – (by the way one of the Associates wrote in her evaluations that something very memorable from the day was the hokie pokie!). A women from N-S-Leadership Conference spoke at the kick-off and nearly cried. Then two HRMs (Jim Marks and Mark Kociubinski) said a thank you to everyone for being there and Felix Fusco led The Home Depot cheer. There were 130 people from The Home Depot, 20 high school students from the community, and 60 from the community and from Northside Leadership Conference (including 10 residents who helped throughout the day). They built the playground, moved 165 cubic yards of mulch, created a little walkway; built 10 adult size picnic tables and 4 child size picnic tables and stained them (with a solid green tint), and mulched the trees near the playground; they did weeding, and moved a huge mound of dirt to backfill the end around the border timbers. Pete Jeffrey came out for prep day 1 and he was there first thing this morning and his son Chris was the lead during the installation. Chris was awesome! He was so good with the volunteers and was really on top of the equipment – he was easy to work with and on top of it.

CBS came out briefly (and a couple associates spoke with him); Fox News came out and Tony Kennedy (a The Home Depot Associate) was interviewed; Fox News was there at the mid-day ceremony; NBC came at the end of the day after all was done but they still filmed the structure and she interviewed Donna Alison, the main community partner point of contact. The Northside Paper came out as well. The mid-day ceremony was a huge success– Hope raffled off a variety of KaBOOM! items and ones from the community and The Home Depot. The Councilman from the City, Luke Ravenstahl, came up and read a Proclamation for Pittsburgh’s First Day of Play. Then Tony Kennedy spoke about The Week of Service and what it means to have 250,000 Associates doing service this week. The mid-day ceremony ended with a beautiful event -- a woman from the National Aviary (was located just around the corner from the park) led a dove release – 25-50 doves came out of 3 crates and the doves flew away.

The board cutting was at 2pm. Tony Kennedy read the letter from the President. Felix Fusco spoke; the Executive Director from Northside Leadership Conference Deborah McClain thanked everyone for their help support, and leadership. Donna Alison presented a 3D color poster of the drawing with “Thank You Hope” written on it and signatures from a large number of community and associate volunteers. Then Donna Alison cut the board and people sprayed Silly String and they took a group photo. The day ended with The Home Depot Cheer which ended with “Improve Everything We Touch”.

Special thanks to Whitney who was an awesome Second! She anticipated a lot and was great! Congratulations to Hope who did an awesome job on her first KaBOOM! build!!!