Helping Hands at Garfield Elementary

Instead of working overtime in Kaiser Permanente Hospital on Martin Luther King, Jr., Day, doctors took off their surgical gloves and donned gardening gloves instead. Students and teachers headed back to school on the national holiday to join Kaiser doctors in a Garfield Elementary beautification project that honored the memory of Dr. King. 

The volunteers split into teams that focused on aspects of the school that were in need of improvement, such as the school's coat of paint, the flowers out front, and general cleaning.

"The concept behind pairing Kaiser with the Redwood City Education Foundation was in line with [King’s] beliefs that working together would make the world a better place," Redwood City Councilmember Barbara Pierce said, who also lent a helping hand on Monday. “So on the day celebrating his birthday, we put those actions into words."

Gerontologist Dr. Parimala Selvan took her day off and gave it to the community that day, dedicating her time to digging the earth to plant bulbs in dirt beds along the school.

“My daughter goes to this school, and I wanted to show her how important services can be," Dr. Selvan said of the reasons that she volunteered her time. 

Selvan was one of more than a dozen doctors from Menlo Park, Redwood City, Santa Clara and San Jose who worked on the school that day. The event was held in conjunction with about 1,000 other MLK, Jr. Day projects in the Bay Area organized by the non-profit group Hands On Bay Area.  

Karl Sonkin, Kaiser Permanente spokesperson said that this day of working is a Kaiser Permanente tradition.

“Kaiser Permanente believes it's a better remembrance of Dr. King's life and work to spend the day making our communities healthier. It was Dr. King's goal, and it's part of Kaiser Permanente's DNA," Sonkin said.

Teams of volunteers of doctors, staff, and administrators from the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Redwood City formed that day to tackle the aesthetic problems that the school faced with the goal of making the school a beautiful place to learn in. 

"The place really needed some loving," Pierce said. Volunteers helped paint the walls a bright green and installed blue carpet.

But volunteers helped with more than just the aesthetics of the building. They moved furniture from room to room, dusted several rooms in the school and pulled weeds from the school's perimeter.

Pierce added, "Extra janitorial time is hard to come by with budget cuts, so we were all happy to help out with some grunt work."

"I was just so glad that everyone came out to help on the holiday," she said. "It was great to see so many young people out there volunteering alongside doctors from Kaiser."