A new organization called Tellico Village Community Outreach, which is led by resident George Bruss, seeks to provide volunteer opportunities for those interested in completing one-day service projects in the Village.
“This is for people in Tellico Village who want to volunteer if they know they have no ongoing responsibilibites,” Bruss, project coordinator, said. “I am finding projects in the community with the different agencies. It’s got to be completed, and you have got to walk away.”
Bruss said he borrowed the concept from an organization called Community Impact that is operating in the San Francisco Bay area, with which he used to be involved.
“We cleaned up the backyard of a nursing home where 12 older ladies lived,” Bruss said of a project he participated in while living in California. “We had seven or eight volunteers, and when we left, the women were applauding us, and some of them were crying. Now when they looked out of their backyard, it was clean. When we finished, that was it, and you didn’t have to do anything else if you didn’t want to.”
Bruss recalled working on a landscaping project with another man from the community who said, “George, I took my little 4-year-old son on the last project I did, and every time we passed by,
he would say, ‘Look, that’s where we helped people.’”
As part of the program in the Village, local merchants take turns sponsoring each of the projects in which TVCO volunteers participate, Bruss said.
Sloan’s hardware store provided supplies including brushes, gloves and paint, while Food Lion donated cardboard for the group’s first project, in which volunteers painted a fence at the Smoky Mountain Service Dogs training facility in Lenoir City.
“We want to get a lot of people from Tellico Village to volunteer,” Bruss said. “... This is for people who really don’t want a lot of obligation but want to go away and say that they did something. If it’s finished, it gives you kind of an ego trip.”
Villager resident Mary Ann Rafferty said she signed up to become involved after seeing it posted on the Nextdoor social media site.
“This just sounded like a fun thing to do,” Rafferty said. “We’ve all had good lives, and it’s time to pay back. My husband volunteers at the fire department, and I volunteer at the hospital. When you’re working and raising a family, you don’t have time for things like this.”
Jerry and Ellen Fox, who have lived in Tellico Village for 10 weeks, said they found out about the event through Bruss’ booth presentation at the most recent Tellico Village HomeOwners Association meeting.
“The service dog aspect sounded interesting,” Ellen said.
For more information on the Tellico Village Community Outreach program, email TVCO928@earthlink.net.
