Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Senthil Rangaswamy, a CAD engineer at Sun Microsystems in Sunnyvale, works on weeding and planting Euryops in front of Hazelwood Elementary School in honor of Earth Day.
Volunteers help beautify School for Earth Day
By Amy Jenkins
To celebrate the 33rd annual Earth Day on April 22, a total of 28 volunteers from Sun Microsystems grabbed shovels and hoes to help beautify the Hazelwood Elementary School campus in Campbell.
Volunteers planted colorful flowers around the campus and helped transform a rundown garden into an area that can be used by students as an outdoor classroom. Despite maintenance efforts by parents like Jane Lawson, who has a fifth-grade son and second-grade daughter at the school and spends a couple hours a day in the garden, many weeds have infested the area.
"We want to get teachers to adopt a plot to take over and let the students water," Lawson says. "The kids can learn about bugs and how things grow out here. My kids like to help me plant seeds but they don't want to weed."
Volunteers were assigned specific duties in the garden, including weeding, planting flowers, vegetables and herbs, and composting. PTA member Beth Linder, who took pictures of the garden transformation for the school yearbook, was in charge of buying the beans, zucchini, herbs, corn and eggplant. Once the vegetables are grown in the summer, the school plans to donate them to the Second Harvest Food Bank in San Jose, Linder says.
"I hope the teachers bring the students out to see what's going on so they can see adults putting in effort and want to help out too," Linder says.
Students were taking tests during the day, but 12 Hazelwood students attended an event at the Pruneyard Shopping Center, where they were taught about environmental awareness and were given the chance to join community leaders in planting an olive tree.
This was the first time a company had helped the school, Linder says. Employees at Sun Microsystems were encouraged by CEO Scott McNealy to devote a half day to community service during the week of April 22 through 26.
"I'm pretty consistent in my participation in community volunteering," says volunteer Carlo Dela Fuente, a Sunnyvale resident, who also helped in the Walk for AIDS in San Jose last year and has volunteered with a mentoring program at Milpitas High School.
Campbell resident and Sun employee Darlene Alameda organized the event along with Big Brothers Big Sisters, which provides after-school-mentoring programs for the school. Alameda's son Justin, a junior at Westmont High School, has had a Big Brother for 6 years, and she says the Earth Day event is a way she can give back to the community. Since Justin lost his relationship with his father and real brother, his Big Brother helps him with homework, helps him earn Boy Scout merit badges and encourages his interest in engineering, Alameda says.
This was the first time Sunnyvale resident Senthil Rangaswamy celebrated Earth Day, and he says he enjoyed it. Along with 5 other volunteers, he dug weeds and planted marigolds below the flagpole in front of the school.
Charlie Lai has been a software engineer at Sun for 7 years and while pulling weeds, he says about volunteering, "I realize the school doesn't have enough resources to do all this; I hope we are doing them a favor and I hope kids can use the garden now."
Principal Maria Wetzel had expected close to 5 volunteers and was thrilled at the turnout, she says. Although some teachers had done prep work on the garden and started planting things such a grapevine and an artichoke plant, the garden needed lots of work. And even before the three hours that the volunteers planned to spend at the site was up, Wetzel was very pleased with the results.
Sunnyvale, California Since 1994
