Fall Harvest Mural Completed!

George! The fall harvest kid!

 A big thanks to Oak Hills Covenant Church of Vista, CA who spent Saturday, August 25 at the NCCS operated Balderrama Preschool in Oceanside. The big project they worked on was the "Fall" section of a 4-part, seasons themed harvest mural. Twenty three volunteers from the church brought paint, brushes, and their able bodies to paint the mural, as well as clean all of our playground equipment, repaint tricycle tracks in the playground, and sand and paint a picnic table. The scrubbed and hosed walls and slides, put artistic touches on the pavement in the playground, and worked on sprucing up the preschool any way they could think of. The volunteers stayed for about 3 hours cleaning and painting. We are so appreciative of Oak Hills Covenant Church for donating both their time and materials to make the preschool a safer, healthier, and more beautiful place for our teachers and students.

Volunteers working on the mural.

Volunteers geared up to start painting!

The students at the preschool absolutely love the mural! The mural features a young boy holding a basket of fall seasonal produce- apples, pears, grapes, and avocados. More grapes and large pumpkins grow near his side. The preschoolers have already affectionately named this character "George". We can't wait to see what they name the Winter, Spring, and Summer harvest friends!

Jesus Martinez working on the finishing touches!

NCCS would also like to thank Jesus Martinez for volunteering to create this mural from design to finishing touches.Jesus is a wonderful local artist, graphic designer, and muralist. If you are interested in supporting his work, he can be reached by email.

Do you have a group interested in improving one of our  sites? 
We can accommodate groups of 5-50 volunteers, and have a range of projects from simply cleaning, to interior painting, murals, and garden projects. For current group (or individual) volunteer opportunities, email Abby at volunteer@sdnccs.org or call her at 760-471-5483.

The full mural. The pillars built into the walls were incorporated into the mural as tree trunks, separating the seasons.

Summer Gardening at North County's Food Bank

Planting tomato seedlings

We have a beautiful summer garden planted at North County's Food Bank! We would like to give a HUGE thank you to Prescription Solutions by OptumRx for doing this great project! Not only did they volunteer to amend the soil and plant new seedlings, but they donated all of the materials that this project required. With 22 volunteers, they were able to get the garden planted quickly, as well as help out inside the warehouse at North County's Food Bank, and replant flower containers in our front entrance.

Prepping the soil for planting

OptumRx volunteers did this project on Wednesday, July 11. If you remember, this was one of the hottest days this summer in San Diego County! I am thankful and impressed they kept up good spirits and hard work despite the heat. All five garden beds were planted- one with a variety of peppers, one with a variety of tomatoes, one with cucumbers, one with melon, and one with watermelon. Thanks again OptumRx!

Everything is planted!

prAna in the garden!

prAna volunteers after a hard days work!

North County Community Services was delighted to have a wonderful volunteer group come to the Gardens at River Road on Friday! The Carlsbad based clothing company prAna brought out a huge crew of volunteers to do a massive day of hard work in the garden! They were able to accomplish so much in a few short hours, and we are so very thankful for the hard work, wonderful and positive attitudes, creativity, and leadership the team brought. Their accomplishments included:

• Planting 6 dwarf fruit trees- all citrus!
• Weeding community garden plots, now ready for planting
• Massive clean-up of compost piles, trash piles, leveling ground, and general beautification
• Staining picnic tables for the garden
• Painting beautiful signs for vegetables, fruit trees, compost, and more
• Finished all the summer plantings for the "North End" of the Gardens at River Road- the half of the garden that produces for our preschool programs and North County's Food Bank.
• Installing 4 new community garden beds- now ready for rent!

It is amazing what we can accomplish as a community when we work together! Thank you prAna for making North County San Diego a better place to live! We hope you can join us again next year!

A bird friend hiding in the flowers.

Welcome to Summer!

Life Technologies Global Volunteer Day May 4 2012

You can feel it in the air, summer is here in San Diego! The gardens are growing fast, North County's Food Bank is doing great, and many of our preschoolers are getting ready to graduate soon! We have had a tremendous amount of volunteer support recently, and I wish we had room to personally thank the 700+ volunteers that have contributed to improving their community through volunteer projects with North County Community Services so far this year. Recently, volunteers have been involved in the following projects:

• In June, North Coast Church helped repaint the inside of one of the preschools we operate in Oceanside. It looks wonderful and pictures are to come soon!
• North County Community Services was featured in The Coast News! Here is the article!
• Volunteers helped collect donations at the National Association of Letter Carriers food drive in May. We had a record number of donations for this particular food drive, and North County's Food Bank is now well stocked with canned and dry food!
• Also in May, Life Technologies volunteered at the Gardens at River Road as one of the projects in their Global Volunteer Day. Not only did they bring 60 volunteers, but they also helped us with supplies including tons of mulch, compost, new plants, and new tools! 
• In April the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints brought the most volunteers to the Gardens at River Road on record at one time- 105 volunteers total! Lots of them were kids, and everyone had tons of fun!

Volunteers from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints April 21 2012

We don't have room to Thank all of our volunteers, but I would like to at least thank all of the groups that have volunteered so far in 2012: 

Walz Group

USMC 9th Comm Bn

Tri City Christian School

Tariq Khamisa Foundation

Taiwanese Presbyterian Church

Redlands Adventist Academy

Pomona College Alternabreak

Pilgrim UCC

Northrop Grumman

North Coast Church

Marines MWSS-372 MT Company

Life Technologies

Junior League of San Diego

Immersion

High Tech High

Hewlett-Packard

Girl scouts

Escondido USDA NRS

CSUSM Golden Key Club

Coca-Cola

Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

Calvary Chapel Vista Women's Ministry

California Conservation Corps

Bank of America 24 Hour Fitness

Thank you one and all for volunteering!

~Abby Weglarz~

~North County Community Services~

~Garden Program & Volunteer Coordinator~

Stopping youth violence, growing fresh food!

North County Community Services (NCCS) has been working with the Escondido location of the Tariq Khamisa Foundation (TKF) for almost a year. TKF works to stop youth violence through education, mentorship, and community service programs. Whenever they have some time off of school, TKF mentors and mentees come to NCCS to do community service projects together! Since April of 2011, they have logged over 300 hours at different volunteer projects within NCCS, including several gardening projects and many trips to North County's Food Bank. Most recently, they sent 22 volunteers to the Gardens at River Road on February 21, since they had the day off of school.

During their two hours in the garden, TKF stayed busy with gardening tasks including weeding, watering, and harvesting peas, cilantro, kale, spinach, and parsley. To keep the weeding from being too much of a chore, one of the mentors had a weed-picking competition, and the winner got to pick out the movie they would go see after the project.

While providing valuable community service, the youth who volunteered had an opportunity to learn about healthy food options, and see it growing. They asked questions about the different types of vegetables, and had the opportunity to learn how to pick different foods. They showed awe and excitement at the project, taking pictures and saying how they would post about it on Facebook later! Below, there are some pictures taken at this garden project.

Above: TKF points the way to a healthy, violence-free future!

Above: A TKF mentor and mentee harvesting sugar snap peas

Above: Having fun in the garden

Above: A TKF mentor and mentees pose next to freshly harvested lettuce

More information about TKF can be found at www.tkf.org

~Abby Weglarz~

~Garden Program and Volunteer Coordinator~

~North County Community Services~

California Conservation Corps

Thanks to the San Diego branch of the California Conservation Corps (the CCC), the gardens at River Road got a good weeding on Saturday, January 14th. We have had quite a few of our beds overgrown with weeds, especially Bermuda grass, and the CCC made a big impact on getting it out of there! Although Bermuda grass is good for lawns, it is a invasive weed that can quickly take over a vegetable garden. It is amazing how much work can get done by 16 people in two hours!

Thank you California Conservation Corps! For more garden pictures, click the blog title for the Facebook album!

~Abby Weglarz~

~North County Community Services~

~Garden Program & Volunteer Coordinator~