If you noticed an unusual number of young people engaged in some serious manual labor in Berkeley on Saturday, Nov. 3, chances are you came across a group engaged in work for The Berkeley Project, an annual event which sees UC Berkeley students working in the community.
The Berkeley Project began in 2006 as a giant, one-day service event and this year an estimated 1,800 students took part, painting and decorating, weeding, planting, cleaning and prettifying, at about 80 different indoor and outdoor sites across the city.
We sent Kaia Diringer out with her camera on Saturday to capture some of the students at work. She took photographs of students cleaning and maintaining the area around Ashby BART, weeding and planting at the Karl Linn Community Garden at Hopkins and Peralta, and painting the activities room at the Young Adult Center at 1730 Oregon Street.
Fully student operated and supported, The Berkeley Project, according to its mission statement, not only provides powerful assistance to the public, but aims to create “a lasting culture of service-learning among its participants” and to “permanently change the relationship between the students and residents of Berkeley through hands-on community service.”
See a gallery of Diringer’s photos.
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