On Friday, June 25, approximately 700 SkillsUSA members, Timberland PRO Series representatives, City Year representatives and industry partners will collaborate in a powerful day of community service, providing repairs and restorations to the Ozanam Home in Kansas City, Missouri and to Marillac in Overland Park, Missouri. This is the third consecutive year for this event.

The Ozanam Home is a non-profit residential treatment center for 70 children with behavioral and emotional, and learning disabilities. Ozanam provides a co-educational day program, group home living, independent living services and behavior consultant services for schools. On a yearly basis, Ozanam serves more than 3,000 children and families.

Projects planned for the day at Ozanam include renovations of the: gym and weight room, baseball fields and soccer fields, barn and footbridge, basketball court, storage shed, and swimming pool. The group will also repair the exterior of the Group Home and the dorms, build picnic tables and benches and landscape the property.

Marillac is a not-for-profit psychiatric treatment center for children and adolescents with severe emotional and behavioral disorders. At Marillac, volunteers will refurbish a fitness trail, perform landscaping, and build picnic tables and benches for a recreation area.

The two facilities are seven miles apart, both 20 miles south of downtown Kansas City. SkillsUSA students will depart from H. Roe Bartle Hall in Kansas City at 8:00 a.m. and return at 3:00 p.m. The Home Depot will be the primary provider of tools and materials for these projects. Together with City Year, the Timberland PRO Series is coordinating and funding the day’s events.

At last year’s service day, the group completed a number of projects at Ozanam, including: landscaping tree and flower beds; building a new softball field; renewing children’s living spaces; restoring the gymnasium and locker rooms to code; masonry repairs; and rejuvenating a historic caboose on the property. In 2002, the group built storage sheds and compost bins as well as provided landscaping and plumbing repairs, sanded and stained bleachers in the gym, and built bleachers for the athletic fields.

Community service is a shared commitment of SkillsUSA and Timberland. SkillsUSA includes in its definition of leadership “a commitment to community,” and The Timberland Company has a strong commitment to community service. Over the past 13 years Timberland has facilitated more than 290,000 hours of community service.