One of our biggest projects during Workday 2014 on May 3 included significant work at the Wilmington Recreation Center. In fact, so much work took place at this site that projects started ahead of Workday. Inside the recreation center rooms received new paint, bookshelves, and furniture. Outside, murals were painted around the center that featured community members. Also, next door at the Wilmington Teen Center, additional work was completed to renovate spaces as well as provide some outdoor garden boxes. The completed work helps create a beautiful, safe place for community members, teens, and children.

The Johnson family home renovation was another key Workday 2014 project. Danta Johnson, a 14-year South Bay resident and Air Force veteran, lived a life dedicated to his faith, his family, his country, and his community. He often spoke to groups teens and children to encourage them in their character, faith, pursuit of excellence, family, relationships, and self-worth. Danta passed away suddenly in August 2013, and is survived by his wife, Colleen, and four small children. Our community mourned the loss of this great man who left a lasting imprint on so many people. To honor his commitment to family and community, several groups along with Sharefest partnered to provide much-needed renovations for his family’s home. Thanks to generous donations, including financial, material, and volunteer support from Home Depot, we completed about $43,000 worth of home projects for Colleen and the children, including a bathroom renovation, house painting, landscaping, book shelves installation, and more.

Living Classroom and Garden. On our 10th Annual Workday on May 4th, 2013, one of our signature projects took place at Nathaniel Narbonne High School in Harbor City. We revitalized the overgrown, neglected garden area and turned it into a Living Classroom and Veterans Garden. The Living Classroom and Veterans Garden will provide Narbonne students with nine different areas to participate in performing arts, reinforce science lessons in a hands-on way, and learn about sustainability, conservation, and environmental responsibility. It will also give students a safe, quiet place to call their own in a world where they often feel stressed, lost, and uncared for. Read more >>

Scoreboard and Victory Garden. With a collaborative effort between Cornerstone Construction Group, King’s Harbor Church, City on a Hill Church, Living Color Landscapes, and the LA Mayor's Office, Sharefest was able to complete two major projects at San Pedro High School. First was the installation of scoreboards purchased seven years ago for the baseball and softball fields, which laid in storage during those years until Sharefest was approached to help erect them. And second was the creation of a garden space that produces high quality organic vegetables for the students, their families and the community. Read more >>

One of Sharefest's most collaborative efforts to date was a campus-wide beautification project at Gardena High School. Project activities included landscaping, irrigation, planting, maintenance, painting, murals, and general campus-wide cleanup. Sharefest was honored to take on this project, which came on the heels of the tragic shooting and wounding of two students at Gardena High School in January 2011. The goal here was to work alongside a community hit by tragedy to create meaningful change and to restore a positive atmosphere of hope that benefits everyone. This Workday project had a ton of support behind it, including Councilwoman Janice Hahn's Office, LAPD, City of Gardena, LAUSD Board Member Dr. Richard Vladovic, Bank of America, LA Mayor's office, TY Nursery, Champions, Gardena One Stop, Hansen's Soda and Toyota. Read more >>

In 2006, 14-year-old Cheryl Green was killed by a gang in Harbor Gateway. Three years later, her name adorned a community center that everyone from the L.A. mayor to the smallest kids in the neighborhood rallied behind. The Cheryl Green Community Center has become a needed symbol of healing and hope for the Harbor Gateway community. At Workday 2008, Sharefest helped paint murals for the center and provided what it could to make the space more inviting, but that was nothing compared to the impact made at Workday 2009. Under the leadership of Cornerstone Construction Group and King's Harbor Church, volunteers and families from the community put in at least $50,000 worth of labor to turn the module into a working community center in one day. Today, the Boys and Girls Club are running programs out of the center. Read more >> and more >> and more >> and more >>

One of the most ambitious projects Sharefest has taken on was the quad project at Banning High School (Wilmington) during Workday 2010. Banning had one of the highest dropout rates in California. Those in the school and the community wanted to improve that reputation. The school had a hole in the middle of campus. At Workday 2009 students helped landscape the area and paint numerous murals. In 2010, Sharefest continued the charge by building a quad area for the students and faculty. What would have cost Los Angeles Unified School District somewhere around $400,000, Sharefest with its resources completed it for a fraction of that price. Significantly, LAUSD had never allowed an outside organization to plan and execute such a big renovation to one of its campuses, but with its growing reputation for its Workday, Sharefest accomplished it. Read more >> and more >>

At Holmes Avenue Elementary School (Los Angeles), Sharefest and its sponsors surprised the staff and students with a gift of a computer lab valued at over $45,000. The new, state of the art computer lab provides students with 35 computer stations giving them access to the most recent technology and a high-quality 21st-century education. In addition to the computer lab, the campus at Holmes Avenue Elementary was revitalized with the painting murals, landscaping, gardening, and replacing playground furniture, as well as some general clean up. Read more >>

Towers Elementary School (Torrance) was just one of the ten schools for which projects were adopted and facilitated by one of our key sponsors, Barnhart Balfour Beatty, for Workday 2011. Workday activities at this particular location included restoring previously painted murals and the addition of new ones, redesigning the teacher’s lounge, cleaning the bathrooms, and, most notably, the design and installation of a garden with an irrigation system. Read more >>

In 2011 Sharefest was privileged to experience a very unique Workday project. Doors of Hope Women's Shelter partnered together with Oceanside Christian Fellowship (OCF) to provide homeless women with temporary shelter, daily meals and showers, clean clothing, and counseling and spiritual guidance. Also, for the Workday project, volunteers gathered to sew quilts at OCF for these women who need that special gift of tangible care and hope. Read more >>

The largest Sharefest project to date has been the $800,000 renovation of the historic Morrell house in Redondo Beach’s Dominguez Park. Constructed around the turn of the century (1906), the Morrell House is now a local historical landmark in the city. From 2004 (the year of Sharefest's inception) until 2010, Sharefest, along with Cornerstone Construction Group and King's Harbor Church, have been involved in the restoration of the historical home – especially during the Workdays.

For more about the Morrell House, visit the webites of the City of Redondo Beach and the Redondo Beach Historical.

ABC Television partnered with Sharefest and Cornerstone Construction Group on a 2006 episode of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. ABC Television worked closely with Sharefest to staff the building of the Ripatti-Pearce home in Redondo Beach. The new home was constructed from the foundation up for the Ripatti-Pearce family. Sharefest was responsible for coordinating hundreds of volunteers during the week-long project.

“Sharefest was instrumental in uniting the community of the South Bay to build a home for the Ripatti-Pearce family. The impact that ShareFest is making locally is a great model that could be used nation-wide,” Diane Korman, Producer, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

For the past few Workdays, Sharefest has participated in a new type of project in Wilmington and Harbor City. It's not about revamping, refurbishing, rebuilding or beautifying. This project was specifically about connecting with people in the communities we're serving. At selected laundromats, volunteers provided money and detergent to wash people's clothes. The aim was to connect with the local underserved individuals in a very tangible way. Volunteers also provided food, snacks and drinks for the community residents, and entertainment for children. Read more >> and more >>

With so many beautification projects during Sharefest's Workdays, it is often easy to overlook the significance of every single one of these projects. One example is Fries Ave. Elementary School (Wilmington), a school severely affected by budget cuts. In 2010 Blanca Cantu had been principal at Fries Ave. for five years, and at Sharefest's Workday 2010 she saw the community come together in a way she’s been working toward for half a decade. Under the guidance of Sharefest dozens of students, parents, teachers and residents from all over her neighborhood took over the school by painting it, repairing it and cleaning it. By the end of the day the school looked completely different, with new murals crafted and new landscaping planted by the stakeholders at her school.