One day in mid-May, I sat on a comfortable bus on my way to Emily Bill Park in Springfield, Massachusetts. Expecting to arrive at the park, do some work, have fun and enjoy the great day, I was in for a surprise. I enjoyed the day, but not without doing a lot of hard work, alongside 500 other volunteers from local neighborhoods. The day began at six with the work lasting straight until six in the evening. When I arrived, along with many others, we saw an old park and recreation center which six months earlier had been a drug haven with a lot of violence. The local authorities and neighborhoods took back the area and with the help of hundreds of volunteers converted the place where nobody went into a place where everybody wanted to go - Emily Bill Park.

Everyone from little kids to the elderly helped to revive and restore this park from its previously run-down state. At the end of the day, when my legs were sore and my arms were hurting, there was a sense of satisfaction within me that I had done my part in helping bring back the park. fl