THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 15, 1996 TAG: 9604130010
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
Just as wars cannot be ended without sending in the armor and the infantry, communities cannot be improved, maintained or reconstructed unless ordinary people do the job.
Healthy communities cannot be built from office towers, executive suites or think tanks. Developers and corporate executives no less than scholars may dream up healthy communities and describe ways to make them reality. But communities are created, sustained and improved by caring populations working together at the grass roots.
Wherever ordinary people lack decent regard for themselves and others, communities fall apart. So the proliferation of citizen-initiated activity aimed at strengthening communities is welcome.
In Hampton Roads, significant numbers of residents and small-business people are working together to banish blight; unite neighborhoods against crime and drugs; befriend youngsters who need role models and one-on-one tutoring; provide wholesome recreational outlets and job opportunities for youths; push city hall to tear down abandoned structures and haul away abandoned motor vehicles; build, paint and mend low-income residences; and clean up waterways, shorelines and wetlands and vacant lots.
With the arrival of spring, the season of renewal, comes Paint Your Heart Out Chesapeake/Norfolk. Paint Your Heart Out this spring is scheduled for Saturday, April 27 (or, if rained out, Saturday, May 4).
The Rotary Club of Chesapeake and the Rotary Club of Norfolk have again lined up donations of paint, lumber, plants and other supplies and pest-control and fire-safety services along with hundreds of civilian and military volunteers. These volunteers will paint, make modest repairs, landscape yards and provide protection against insects and fire for carefully selected elderly and/or handicapped low-income homeowners.
The Rotary Club of Chesapeake originated Paint Your Heart Out five years ago. One-hundred Chesapeake homes have been spruced up in the four Paint Your Heart Outs since. Twenty-five more Chesapeake homes are slated for Paint Your Heart Out treatment April 27.
Inspired by Chesapeake's example, the Rotary Club of Norfolk mounted its first Paint Your Heart Out last year, brightening three houses. Norfolk aspired to paint and fix up 10 dwellings this year but an outpouring of volunteers, money and in-kind gifts is making it possible to undertake 26 homes in 16 neighborhoods.
Fielding paint, repair and gardening teams are several Rotary clubs; Lions, Sertoma and Ruritan clubs; broadcasting and telecommunications companies; churches (including First Chinese Baptist Church in Norfolk); the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater; banks; Navy ships and units; a major law firm and major corporations; hospitals; and Tidewater Community College.
The splendid Paint Your Heart Out enterprise benefits not only the low-income residents whose houses and yards are improved but also their neighborhoods and all who contribute to the improvement effort.
We look forward to the spring when Paint Your Heart Out teams assemble in every Hampton Roads city.
Meanwhile, May 13-19 is Virginia Beach's Reside with Pride Awareness Week. The nonprofit Reside With Pride organization encourages homeowners and neighborhoods to maintain property in good condition and to arrest blight early. The year-round program assists needy homeowners and mobilizes volunteers to halt decay and deal with other threats to neighborhoods.
Additionally, there's Habitat for Humanity, the third largest U.S. homebuilder, which recently completed its 40,000th house. Established in 1966 as a Christian ministry, Habitat builds housing with the participation of the low-income families who occupy it.
The South Hampton Roads Habitat's 29th house has just been finished; the regional chapter, which set up shop in 1988, expects 10 more houses to be completed within the next nine months. Habitat houses enrich materially and spiritually those who live in them and help rescue sinking neighborhoods. Norfolk-based Plumbline Ministries, sponsored by Grace and St. Paul's Episcopal churches, also engages in low-income homebuilding locally.
Millions of people giving their time, talent and money to further worthwhile causes makes America beautiful. The millions of naysayers, hard-hearted and indifferent account for much of America's ugliness. The more builders and beautifiers of communities, the better. We can never have too many. by CNB