Balfour Beatty Employees Join 350 Volunteers for 10th Annual Sharefest Workday

More than 350 volunteers joined Balfour Beatty Construction May 4, to repair and spruce up seven schools in the Redondo, Torrance, Culver City and Wiseburn School Districts as part of Los Angeles County's 10th Annual Sharefest Workday. An estimated $200,000 in school improvements were made — all at no cost to the schools — by Balfour Beatty Construction employees, contractors, vendors, school staff, students and community members.

This is the fourth year the company has supported the community activity, and the first year that additional financial support was provided through Balfour Beatty Construction/Sharefest's 1st annual golf tournament, which helped to raise $50,000 to support the improvement projects.

Tom Schlegel, Balfour Beatty Construction's Sharefest event coordinator, said the company's participation in Sharefest Workday is a positive experience for the company's employees, contractors, consultants and suppliers.

“The Sharefest organization understands the needs of local communities within the Los Angeles region and helped us find and organize projects that improve the physical and learning environments of students,” said Schlegel. “Everyone that participated truly felt a sense of community and was very enthusiastic about playing a role in an effort that has such an immediate impact on students and staff of the schools.”

Schools benefitting from Sharefest Workday included Jefferson Middle School and Arnold Elementary School in Torrance Unified School District; Parras Middle School, Tulita Elementary School and Redondo Union High School in Redondo Beach Unified School District; Da Vinci Science Charter School in Wiseburn School District and Culver City High School in Culver City Unified School District.

Examples of projects completed included: reviving gardens with installation of new plants and general weeding; creating outdoor learning environments; installing decomposed granite walkways; planting native California plants; extensive painting of exterior classroom doors and building facades; cleaning classrooms and multipurpose rooms; planting palm trees; handcrafting and installing garden benches and planter bench combinations; repairing and painting basketball hoops, as well as painting site-specific murals. For more information, visit www.sharefestinc.org/workday.