Have an elderly neighbor who needs a little painting done around the house? Maybe there’s a single mom on your street who needs some help cleaning up her yard?
If so, Norman Blanton and CareFest® 2015 want to hear from you. The coordinator for CareFest is looking for projects that take four to six hours, where volunteers can come in and work for free, assisting those in need in South County.
Blanton has the strong backs; he just needs to find projects where volunteers can help.
“Our greatest need right now is projects,” Blanton said. “I am having a tough time finding people to identify those who have a need.”
Norris Brown of Riverview’s South Bay Church is also heavily involved in CareFest, helping to identify worthy projects. The church, at 13498 U.S. 301 S., also will host a party for volunteers after the event, slated for around 1 to 2 p.m. the day of CareFest, Saturday, Sept. 26.
“We are trying to gather churches, businesses or any other groups that would like to come together that day to do projects in the community,” Blanton said. “Our main emphasis would be residential home repairs. We can paint interior walls in houses, clean yards, cut branches … anything we can do in a four-to-six-hour project.” Hundreds of volunteers from all over South County have participated in past years.
Volunteers are especially interested in helping the disabled, disabled vets, vets on low income, single parents and those who may be facing personal or financial crises. Anyone who calls looking for help gets a followup interview to verify his or her circumstances.
Blanton, a former pastor at Ruskin’s Foursquare Church, is a Plant City resident. He brought the project to Eastern Hillsborough for six years under the auspices of “Somebody Cares Tampa Bay.” He also helped pioneer the effort in South County.
CareFest contacts local churches and other groups to help identify needs in the community and also recruit volunteers for the small projects that can be completed in a few hours but are often beyond the abilities of homeowners. He also asks for donations for the cleanup, such as paint, brushes and cleaning supplies.
Similar events are planned throughout the Bay Area, with CareFest armies of volunteers set to sweep through Dunedin, Tampa and St. Petersburg, armed with brushes, shovels and trash bags, helping those who need assistance with small projects.
Adopting a project means that your church or organization will provide as many materials as possible. The group is also asking that volunteers let Somebody Cares Tampa Bay [CareFest’s umbrella organization] know the materials your church or organization will not be providing.
“We are a Christian-based organization and we just want to be able to show acts of kindness,” said Blanton. “There are a lot of people out there doing great stuff but we need a response from the public to identify projects. We are looking for churches and other local groups to come together to have a lot of fun while helping.”
Once the day is complete, volunteers are invited to a celebration service.
“You would think it would be a natural thing for churches to want to get out beyond the church walls and get out in the community, but a lot of times they don’t know where to start,” said Blanton. “But once they start this working, praying and fellowshipping together, it really makes a lot of changes in people’s lives.”
For information about the event, to donate or volunteer, call Blanton at 813-326-0749 or email sflatt917@gmail.com.
For more information on the group, visit www.carefestusa.com.
CareFest History
CareFest was an outgrowth of Super Bowl XXV. This compassion festival, done the week prior to the Super Bowl had over 1,400 volunteers serve approximately 12,000 attendees. More than 180 churches and business combined their resources, along with Somebody Cares Tampa Bay and the national partner, Operation Blessing. Over 120,000 pounds of groceries and three truckloads of clothes were distributed, lunches were served to all participants, three sports clinics were hosted by active professional athletes, games, adult and youth music and more was provided. One thousand and ten people indicated they made a decision for Christ that day.
Afterward, Daniel Bernard, president of Somebody Cares Tampa Bay, was asked to share with the heads of various departments of the City of Tampa. From this meeting, where Daniel shared the desire for the Church to serve the city, CareFest was born.
September 18-24 was set for the first CareFest week. The object of this week is literally to do all the good we can by all the means we can. There exists a friendly competition was declared by the two cities across the Bay: St. Petersburg and Tampa. The city that brought the most volunteers on CareFest Day would win the Care Cup and be deemed the City of Compassion for that year.
CareFest grew from those two cities in 2002 to four cities in 2004. CareFest was literally done in between the four hurricanes that bombarded Florida that year. In 2005, CareFest was extended in 11 cities. More than 2,500 volunteers participated by doing 145 projects. It was estimated that over one million dollars of goods and services impacted those 11 communities in one day. A couple of cities, such as Ft. Myers and Orlando, participated last year. Indianapolis and other cities were doing similar things, but wanted to be connected with CareFest in some way, and are viewed as partnering communities. We hope that each year more cities will catch the vision and that the vision will go nationally to many more cities.
Source: CareFest