City Year Orlando opening day 2019 celebration

City Year Orlando kicked off the 2019-2020 school year with a weekend of festivities to celebrate the 80 AmeriCorps committing a year of service to support students in Orange County Public Schools.

Opening Day began on Friday, August 23, 2019 with our Champion’s Reception, hosted at the Beardall Senior Center. The event brought together City Year Orlando team sponsors, board members, champions, as well as families and friends of our AmeriCorps members. Team Leaders, Lizzy Stewart and Jhalon Thomas, energized the room with a power greeting welcome and shared why they chose to serve a second year in Orlando.

Donna Mirus Bates, Senior Vice President, Strategic Partnerships & Communication with Universal Parks & Resorts and a City Year Orlando board member, presented Comcast NBCUniversal remarks that touched on the importance of the relationships our AmeriCorps members are building with students. We closed the program with Senior Director of the Foundation of Orange County Public Schools, Debi Pedraza, who received her official City Year red jacket that evening.

Click here to view photos from this event.

The celebration continued the next morning on Saturday, August 24, 2019 with a beautification service project at partner school Jones High School. City Year Orlando staff and AmeriCorps members along with Keep Orlando Beautiful and Green Up Orlando were able to clean up litter, plant, weed, mulch and prune the campus landscape to help create a beautiful environment for students.

Our AmeriCorps members were also able to show off their creative side by painting appreciation succulent pots with inspirational images and messages that were given to the partner teachers at each of our eight schools.

We would like to give special appreciation to Sean Hipps with Keep Orlando Beautiful and Jody Buyas with Green upOrlando for donating the plants, supplies and resources needed to beautify Jones High School.

View more photos from the opening day physical service event.