Several volunteers and area foster children rolled up their sleeves to brighten their collective environment during the 13th annual "Red Day" community service event Thursday.
During the annual day of service, volunteers from Keller Williams Realty worked side-by-side with the kids to help clean up gardens, do interior painting and transform a drab concrete recreation yard into an outdoor oasis.
Cruz Moreno helped spearhead this year's event with Douglas County Juvenile Department Director Aric Fromdahl.
"For us, we just want to impact the community and give (the kids) a more positive environment," Moreno said. "This program is all about foster care children. By no fault of their own, they're in the system because they're unable to be housed in a traditional foster care home.
"We just want to give them a better living experience."
The Red Day team kicked off the day working at two of the county's coed juvenile foster homes: River Rock and Foundations. Work began by cleaning up the garden areas at one home so that the kids could have a garden of their own.
The icing on the cake was at Rising Light, an 8-bed housing unit specifically for at-risk foster girls. Prior to Thursday, the outdoor recreation yard at Rising Light consisted of nothing more than cinder blocks and a concrete foundation.
But, with plenty of elbow grease and a generous gift from Lowe's, that rec yard was converted into a patio area, complete with two sets of tables and patio chairs and a number of plants and shrubs to give the area a facelift.
"This was one of the projects we have wanted to do for a long time," Fromdahl said. "We really wanted to beautify it so the girls had a nice outdoor-type area to enjoy."
Lowe's chipped in for the entirety of the Red Day projects by providing a sizable discount on any supplies the volunteers needed. The group was also given an assist from the City of Roseburg maintenance department, which provided all the gardening and other tools that would be needed throughout the day.
"We had a lot of goodwill from the community, not only with their time, but with their monetary donations," Fromdahl said.
The Red Day tradition was born on May 14, 2009, when Mary "Mo" Anderson — who Moreno calls Keller Williams' "cultural grandmother" — decided to shut down her office for the day, which was her birthday, and do something to give back to the community.
That tradition has continued on the second Thursday of every May since.
Moreno said that on Red Day, every Keller Williams office worldwide closes its doors for the day, each with a civic service project or projects to accomplish.
"We have kept doing it to honor Mo by giving back to our communities," Moreno said. "It's pretty awesome, really. It makes a big difference in peoples' lives.
"Now I have to go jump on a ladder," said Moreno as he began to hang strings of patio lighting around the concrete walls of the newly refurbished yard.
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