Volunteering: An Art of Sharing Love
Photos courtesy of SCP
From saving local tortoise habitats, to preparing books for distribution to children in need, Unificationists in Las Vegas remain dedicated to serving their community in creative and meaningful ways. Shine City Project (SCP) volunteers have spent the new school year supporting a half dozen initiatives to help improve the neighborhoods and lives of their community members.
In honor of Desert Tortoise Week, which occurred the first week of October, SCP members picked up litter to protect the state reptile. “[We] gather[ed] at the Boulder City Conservation Easement,” said SCP Director Jeffrey Silerio, which preserves more than 87,000 acres of Mojave Desert landscape. He said the group spent several hours collecting trash and debris that could harm the hard-shelled herbivores. The largest terrestrial turtle in the US, desert tortoises are a threatened species due to increased habitat loss and fragmentation, predation, and other factors reducing the native population by up to 90 percent.
In September, the SCP team returned to Spread the Word Nevada, a nonprofit they frequently support, to clean books in time for the 2023-24 academic year. “Spread the Word Nevada is dedicated to advancing early childhood literacy by providing books for children and households located in at-risk, low-income neighborhoods,” Silerio said. “Since 2001, they've been able to distribute over 7.1 million books to 790,025 students in both Northern and Southern Nevada. On average, that's 60,000 books for students each month.”
Silerio led the group in cleaning and sanitizing numerous books. “At our disposal, we had a wet and dry cloth, plastic scraper, permanent marker, scissors, tape, a couple erasers, and some goo and adhesive remover,” he said. “We had to ensure that the front and back covers and individual pages were all clean and that any stray markings, stickers, and dirt were all removed. For books that were too damaged or contained unsuitable content for children, these books had to be placed in plastic bins for recycling.”
In recent weeks, the group has also helped harvest dates at Ahern Orchard, a public community garden, and plucked decaying summer squash at another location for composting. Partnering again with The Just One Project nonprofit, SCP volunteers distributed donated food to families and kids at a local middle school as well. “[We] passed out frozen cherries, walnuts, canned chicken, canned tomatoes, garbanzo beans, split peas, and other items,” Silerio noted.
Protecting the environment, and supporting organizations benefiting disadvantaged youth and the elderly, among other vulnerable groups, have long been the charitable focus of SCP, which was independently founded in 2013 by a group of young Unificationists including Silerio.
“Overall, we enjoy [these] experiences,” he said. “We just wanted to share some love with everyone.”
You can learn more about SCP’s ongoing service projects here.