Photo from PoPville flickr user hellomarkers!

Thanks to all for sending word of Greater Greater Washington’s initiative. They write:

“Greater Greater Washington is organizing community shovel brigades to clear out bus stops tomorrow (Sunday). Right now there are meet-ups organized for Dupont (Q Street Metro entrance) and Columbia Heights (Metro entrance by Five Guys) at 3:00 PM Sunday.

Please help spread the word – there are way too many dangerous bus stops out there!”

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From Neal Becton of Som Records:

“Neal Becton is calling all shovelers to come down to the Black Cat today and help us dig out some more space in front of the club so we can have a dealer unloading area for the record fair tomorrow. Merci!

Right now there are two four foot wide paths from the sidewalk to the Cat. In the next few hours (and once some customers leave the shop) I’m going to hollow out one or two more. Would love a little help so we could clear the whole thing.”

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Photo from PoPville Flickr user Sanjay Suchak

On Thursday, February 11th, Food & Friends needs 20 volunteers to deliver meals, especially those with 4-wheel-drive vehicles. Those without cars would be very much appreciated in the kitchen, and it would be great if they could come between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. Volunteers may sign up to chenderson@foodandfriends.org. This information is also available on our website at www.foodandfriends.org/winterstorm2010. Without Food & Friends, our clients likely will not eat, so the help of the community is vital. Meals may be picked up from Food & Friends (219 Riggs Road, NE/Washington, DC) between 10 a.m. and 12 a.m., we will provide detailed delivery directions, and routes should take no more than 3 hours. For more information, prospective volunteers may call 202.841.5347.

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“Dear PoP,

I’m wondering if maybe you could ask your readers to send in potential projects for MLK Day of Service (unless you’re already collecting info). Most of the city has the day off, and a lot of projects I know are always set up for people to go and help out within their community. For instance, a few years back I volunteered @ Roosevelt doing cleanup, and spent a few hours with a ton of people cleaning out their field house. I’d love to see a good list of where I (and others) could donate some time on Monday.

Oh, and here’s 2 sites I found:
http://dc.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=dc&cdn=citiestowns&tm=11&f=10&su=p554.12.336.ip_&tt=2&bt=0&bts=0&zu=http%3A//app.cncs.dc.gov/mlkday/viewprojects.asp

http://www.serve.gov/recruit.asp”

Here are some opportunities from Thanksgiving but if anyone has some MLK specific recs please leave in comments.

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Photo by PoPville flickr user hohandy

“Dear PoP,

I am going to be spending the holiday in DC and I want to volunteer time on either Christmas eve or Christmas day. Do you know if Martha’s Table or other places need help either of those days? Something in or near CH or the metro would be great as I don’t have a car.”

We looked at some volunteer opportunities for Thanksgiving. That’s probably a good start. Info on volunteering at Martha’s Table can be found here. Does anyone know of some specific opportunities for volunteering over Christmas?

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Photo from PoPville flickr user rosiedawn

“Dear PoP,

I just go back from donating blood at Children’s hospital. They told me they need to organize blood drives for the 22nd, 23rd and 29th of December. If you can get 15-20 people to agree to donate blood, they can send a blood mobile out to a designated location and do a blood drive.

How about a PoP blood drive. I bet you have a lot of readers who are not leaving town. Might be cool to do in in conjunction with a local restaurant (Pete’s? CommonWealth?) at lunch time. It could also be a book or toy drive for Children’s.”

If I can get 20 people to commit I’ll happily coordinate. If you’d like to donat please mention which day (22, 23, or 29) works for you and where you’d like to have it set up.

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Photo by PoPville Flickr user rosiedawn

“Dear PoP,

I was just wondering if you had heard about any volunteer opportunities in the neighborhood on Thanksgiving. I’ve gone through the lists of volunteer opportunities on Washington Post, Washingtonian, Idealist, ServeDC, etc. and all of them are completely booked up with volunteers and aren’t accepting any more people. It’s great that there’s such an outpouring of support this holiday season (and that organizations are only taking on the # of volunteers they can actually use), but I was just wondering if there weren’t some less well-publicized volunteer opps that could still use some helping hands (or cars) this Thanksgiving.

Any suggestions from you or readers would be appreciated!”

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Old Austin Pick Up Truck, originally uploaded by imagetaker!.

From an email:

“Bruce Monroe Elementary School has a garden that needs mulch. Takoma City has mulch that needs a garden. If you can help out your neighbors, please contact me today.

Nuri Heckler- Volunteer Outreach
Americorps VISTA
Greater D.C. Cares
202-777-4469 phone
nheckler@greaterdccares.org”

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From an email:

A small Quaker preschool at DuPont Circle needs volunteers Thursday, Friday and Saturday for a PLAYGROUND BUILD! We are replacing a 20+ year old playground at School for Friends, and we could use your help.

A group called Learning Structures helped design the new playground, and will be down this week guiding the build. We need some skilled workers for Thursday and Friday, and anybody who can come to help out Saturday is welcome.

Please contact Roxana Geffen (roxanag@gmail.com) if you can help! On Saturday, we need all skill levels for building, as well as help with child care and general logistics.

Skill levels:

1 I’m nice to be with
2 Basic drill-handling and hammering
3 I’ve built a deck and done a reasonable amount of carpentry
4 Skilled carpenter, worked professionally or equivalent

We also welcome donations of food, water, funds or tools (we can give you our tax id & receipt!).

School for Friends: http://www.schoolforfriends.org/

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building the bed, originally uploaded by Prince of Petworth.

Photos taken by Johnny Casana.

I bumped into some folks (Dan, John, Christen, Johnny and Natty) installing gardening boxes at the newly renovated Cesar Chavez Charter School. I love bumping into projects like this.

One of the participants, John, sent me the following by email:

“This weekend, we installed five large raised beds and filled them with compost; we will be building roughly ten more once we secure funding, and we’ll be painting them all so they look nice. The garden will be an educational garden for the school, which is one of the Cezar Chavez Public Charter Schools for Public Policy.

There will be a community open house that will take place at the school on October 30th, and we hope to have a sign up by then and educate DC council members, other VIPs, teachers and parents about the concept. We (that is, the folks you saw, five of us who are volunteering our time as the Columbia Heights Garden Club) plan to work with school administrators and faculty over the winter to engage the students in the planning and planting for these spaces next spring. Eventually, we hope to assist with incorporating the garden into the curriculum, teaching young people about growing food, native plants, storm water runoff, and more. And we hope to engage the community along the way.”

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“Dear PoP,

Like millions of others in this shitty economy, I’m unemployed and looking for work. There’s only so much cold-calling and resume sending one can do in a day though, and I was wondering if you and your readers could highlight volunteer opportunities in PoPville for those jobseekers among us bored out of our minds during the search?”

We’ve looked at volunteer opportunities in the forum section here. There are some good options out there. But the PoP forum is pretty dead. So if folks know of good places to volunteer please leave them in the comments section here and I can refer folks to this post in the future. And to the original reader who sent in the email – thanks for asking, I admire your decision to do this.

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a seed for every #1 from causeman on Vimeo.

Support Bloombars. From an email:

“On Thursday, July 2nd, “Friends of BloomBars” will host a fundraiser at 1212 Lamont St. NW from 6:30 – 9:30 pm. Your thoughtful and generous contributions will help open the doors to array of arts and community-based programming. Checks can be made payable to: BloomBars, LLC. Give what you can. Suggested Donation: $25-75. If you are not able to attend but wish to give, please send checks to 3222 11th Street, Washington, DC 20010. Thank you.

The party goes on at BloomBars starting at 9:30pm. Meet and experience Artist in Bloom residents and other amazing talent in bloom!”

And another worthy cause. From an email:

Get Involved in Your Neighborhood!

Join the Neighboring Initiative!
Team up with fellow residents of Petworth and Columbia Heights at the following events to create sustainable activity in neighborhoods! Join Greater DC Cares in its goal to reach every resident of these areas, and motivate them to become active participants of their own communities. If you would like to learn more about or attend one of these events, email Meghan at mmcnamara@greaterdccares.org. Continues after the jump. Read Full Post

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I’ve often wondered about this restaurant located on the 600 block of T Street, NW near the Howard Theater and Florida Ave. I couldn’t find anything about it on the web. I’m guessing it’s either super incredible or terrible. Anyone ever check this spot out?

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DSCN9615, originally uploaded by Prince of Petworth.

It was awesome to see so many folks out. Folks from all over DC. It was great to see the Social folks as well. It’s nice to see businesses get involved in these types of events. The picture above is from just one of the pick up spots so we put a good dent in! But more importantly were all the folks from the neighborhood who saw us walking around. I know my little clean up group of three had lots of people thank us for our efforts. I think this is just as important as the actual clean up. So thanks again for all who made the effort to come out. Next month we should have a hundred people! For a little more than one hour it is a great statement to make! Next month is Mt. Pleasant – stay tuned for details.

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DSCN8423, originally uploaded by Prince of Petworth.

We will be partnering with NCHCA to clean parts of Columbia Heights this month (Mt. Pleasant in June). Meet at Columbia Heights Coffee (11th between Park and Monroe) at 10am. Let’s represent!

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