Students and staff turn salvaged materials into a space of care.
During this cold winter season, we wanted to share a heartwarming story about a group of teachers and staff at Prince George’s County’s William Wirt Middle School who were empowered to address the needs of their students by creating a school laundry room.
Resource teacher Monica says that the school is Title 1 school in which 92% of its students receive free or reduced lunches. Students are required to wear uniforms and many of them come to school in unclean uniforms because they lack the means to regularly wash their clothes. In the hopes of helping these students, Monica and a group of teachers and staff wanted to create a laundry room with fresh paint, shelving, and folding areas to make the space usable and welcoming for families.
While on a tight schedule to complete the project, the group applied for a grant through Community Forklift’s Community Building Blocks (CBB) program, which distributes free building materials for projects that serve the greater community. Community Forklift provided William Wirt Middle School with free furniture pieces, laundry items such as ironing boards and drying racks, and paint.
We are ecstatic to hear that our neighbors at William Wirt have completed the project! They now have their very own laundry room providing for the needs of its 1,200 students and their families.
“We would never have been able to prep the space without this grant. So, again I cannot begin to thank you all.”
Every time you donate or shop at Community Forklift, you’re helping us lift up local communities through reuse. We turn the construction waste stream into a resource stream for communities in the DC region – by keeping perfectly good items out of the landfill, preserving historical materials, providing low-cost building supplies, and creating local green jobs.
