By Brian Guyer
Donor and Community Engagement Director
During this year’s United Way Day of Caring, I was tasked with working in South Salt Lake as part of a 700+ person volunteer effort in the city. The day was a sight to behold; it was hard to drive a single block without seeing white “Live United” shirts doing work to beautify the city or help local non-profit partners like Junior Achievement or the Police Athletic League.
There was a wide variety of projects in South Salt Lake; some volunteers read with third and fourth grade students while others landscaped city parks. One group of volunteers stands out for me – Zions Bank. These volunteers were tasked with beautifying the park strips on West Temple. This sounds like a simple enough task but they soon realized that they were in for a hard day’s work. Several of these volunteers used pick axes (many for the first time) to break up asphalt and compounded dirt that had been neglected for many years.
After the old dirt and asphalt were cleared, the volunteers then moved on to planting new vegetation and laying wood chips and rock. The hard work, however, did not dampen the enthusiasm of the Zions volunteers and most wore smiles, with sweat running down their foreheads, until the project was finally finished at 5 pm. This was no fluffy volunteer project (as if any volunteer project is fluffy) but the volunteers from Zions never uttered a single complaint.
The section of West Temple that runs through South Salt Lake has a much more inviting and attractive feel to it and I encourage anyone with the time to take a drive down West Temple to enjoy the fruits of the Zions Bank volunteers hard work. Many thanks to Zions and the City of South Salt Lake for coming together for such a rewarding project.
