Leslie Littlefield takes a deep breath as she looks at the storage racks filled with volunteer kits she has assembled. There are plastic buckets, soap pads, multi-purpose sprays, bristle brooms and other assorted cleaning items filling each shelf. As the Rescue Mission’s volunteer coordinator she has prepared for volunteer groups before, but it is rare that she prepares for300 people on a single day.
Leslie Littlefield takes a deep breath as she looks at the storage racks filled with volunteer kits she has assembled. There are plastic buckets, soap pads, multi-purpose sprays, bristle brooms and other assorted cleaning items filling each shelf. As the Rescue Mission’s volunteer coordinator she has prepared for volunteer groups before, but it is rare that she prepares for300 people on a single day.
Leslie Littlefield takes a deep breath as she looks at the storage racks filled with volunteer kits she has assembled. There are plastic buckets, soap pads, multi-purpose sprays, bristle brooms and other assorted cleaning items filling each shelf. As the Rescue Mission’s volunteer coordinator she has prepared for volunteer groups before, but it is rare that she prepares for300 people on a single day.
On Tuesday, March 26th, the Rescue Mission welcomed over 300 sales representatives from the Coca-Cola Company. The sales reps came to Roanoke from all over the Eastern Seaboard and were here for Coke’s annual sales representative meeting being held at the Hotel Roanoke.
While in town the employees did a service project and selected the Rescue Mission as their service site. Leslie Littlefield, Volunteer Coordinator at the Mission was thrilled at the number coming to help. “We got a lot of projects accomplished with 300 people!”
Coke’s sales reps will spent three hours working at the Mission from 1:00pm to 4:00pm. During that time, the volunteers served in every major department of the Rescue Mission performing duties from deep cleaning an oven in the Food Services Kitchen to sanitizing almost 300 mattresses for the multiple shelters. The volunteers were given job description cards selected at random, each with an assignment and then matched up with a team leader from the Mission staff or Executive Board, and a location on the Rescue Mission Campus. At the end of the allotted time, the 300 Coke employees met together again in the Rescue Mission dining room for a closing word from Rescue Mission CEO Joy Sylvester-Johnson.
“It is not typical for a company to spend part of their valuable meeting time to volunteer, but they told us this is part of the Coke culture. We are very thankful that Coke chose us for their volunteer site and for all the helping hands that served here Tuesday,” said Johnson.