"You're in the trenches now"

...warned Bill, the site supervisor, on the first day of our first project, working with the Baltimore non-profit 

"Academy of Success". 

Southwest baltimore may not have the best track record, but the Community Empowerment Center we are helping to build at 200 S. Franklintown Road will help get the area's residents and youth on a track to success.

 

Monday/Orientation: We started the week at the Academy of Success's nearby Youth Development Center learning about our sponsoring organization's history and visions for the future, and hearing how we as an AmeriCorps team will fit in the picture. Our task is to complete phase one of the renovation needed to convert a 50,000 sq. ft. old factory building into the Academy's new Community Empowerment Center--in just 6 weeks. The initial tour of this rundown and neglected factory building could have intimidated us, but the warm smiles and passion coming from our ambitious sponsor, Academy founder Ben Barnwell,  infected us all with optimism and made us anxious to get started.

Tuesday: Our first day working on-site brought the team up a steep 30-foot ladder and onto section one of the factory's questionable roof. We surpassed our site supervisor's daily goal of stripping the tar by lunch, and finished the day with most of the gravel shoveled and swept off into a dumpster below.

Wednesday: We finish removing gravel and start locating weak spots in the roof. With a few whacks of a shovel, we punch out holes where we will reinforce the roof with 2x4's and plywood. After lunch, the team moved inside to do interior gutting and some crowbar demolition to old furniture left behind in the old bakery/brewery/paint factory. Later we find out that we exceeded the rented dumpster's weight limit by 5 tons...oops.

Thursday: Great weather for more roof work, too bad five of our team members couldn't make it. With all 11 of us in action, we will rock that roof next week :)

Friday: We're taking a break from BMORE, getting the campus's recyclables recycled, and using 4 q-tips to clean the dirt and dust  from the factory out of our poor ears. 

We heart getting filthy: