Albion Life Today

Over 150 student and community volunteers participated in the city’s annual One Albion Community Day event Saturday, September 6th. Volunteers arrived at the Victory Park Pavilion at nine in the morning and spread out to 16 sites throughout Albion.

Projects included a variety of activities, like picking vegetables at the Albion Community Gardens, picking up trash throughout town, packing boxes at the Community Table, processing donations at the ‘There’s Enough’ free store, planting trees and flowers, staining a bridge, constructing park benches, weeding and cutting brush, and painting.

The program was hosted by Albion College’s Center for Sustainability and the Environment (CSE). Students apply to be members of the CSE and commit themselves to a minimum of ten hours of engagement in environmental and sustainability activities, focusing on the campus and local communities. The program is staffed by Executive Director Monica Day, who also is the Director of the Whitehouse Nature Center, and Tom Wilch, who serves as Faculty Director.

Juanita Solis-Kidder, President of Citizens to Beautify Albion, organized several projects for the event including clearing brush and painting a retaining wall at the back of empty lots on the corner of Austin Avenue and Albion Street. The lots across from McAuliffe Park are important sites for future commercial development along the Austin Avenue Corridor. Citizens to Beautify Albion, which maintains gardens located all over Albion, had already installed flower boxes along the street by the site. The volunteers, some who were new to painting, enjoyed being outdoors and in a few hours the site looked like a park.

The event concluded with a picnic lunch for the many volunteers back at the Victory Park pavilion, and with the two Directors taking down tables and carrying things away, as the last ones to leave, having left Albion looking bright and fresh for the Fall.