Team Care Force: Helping Communities Across the Country

My name is Katie Morgan, and I have been a corps member for City Year for the past two years. During my first year, I worked full-time at Benjamin Franklin High School in Philadelphia doing classroom assistance, tutoring, afterschool programming, planning college and career fairs, mentoring and improving the school climate. This past year, I served on Team Care Force, based out of City Year Headquarters in Boston.

City Year's Katie Morgan, left, and Jaimee Goodman pose in front of Care Force Two.

Care Force is a division of City Year that engages corporate partners such as CSX in large-scale community service projects. These events focus on physical transformative service in which the corporate partners' employees can participate, such as the CSX City Year Service Days. In addition, CSX has donated two containers - Care Force One and Care Force Two - to ship materials needed for these service day events across the country.

My experience with Team Care Force this past year was invaluable. I was able travel around the country, work with amazing community partners and lead hundreds - if not thousands - of volunteers in community service. One of my favorite events was a CSX Service Day in Atlanta, Georgia. We worked in the Cabbagetown and Reyoldstown neighborhoods to revitalize the entrance to the Krogg Street Tunnel, which has train tracks running on top of it. This was my first landscaping project, so in addition to working with cement for the first time, I also learned how to plant shrubs, flowers and trees.

My favorite part of the day was watching the volunteers interact. There were CSX employees and executives not only working side by side with each other but also side by side with community members from Cabbagetown and Reynoldstown. There were community members who literally lived on opposite sides of the tracks for decades who had never met, and to see them meeting for the first time was exciting. I knew that this day was just the beginning of many new friendships.

At the end of the day, many of the community members were overjoyed to have had the opportunity and tools to revitalize this space that they see everyday.