SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. (USTCNS) --- A group of U. S. Transportation Command volunteers headed out to donate their time assisting a local school earlier this month.
The USTRANSCOM Senior Enlisted Group (SEG) adopted McHenry Elementary Grade School (grades 1-5) located in East St. Louis about three months ago.
"We specifically sought out an impoverished school needing help on many levels… mentoring and tutoring of students and structural improvements (self-help in nature)," says Master Sgt. Joan Yunk-Arnold, Joint Intelligence Center - Transportation.
The school's population is around 350 students, so the SEG couldn't support the entire population with art supplies, for example. They asked the principle, Ms. Lillie Mixon, to chose a class that needed attention more than the others, and she suggested the fifth graders (numbering around 60).
"Our first project was donating art supplies to the school's fifth grade class," Yunk-Arnold points out. "The school principle also asked if we would help with several month-long cleanup and beautification projects the school was involved in."
Members of the SEG agreed to participate and also use the cleanup/beautification effort as a mentoring tool. Ideally, every SEG member that participated was to bring a junior enlisted person in order to show that belonging to an enlisted group is not all fund raisers, but events that allow them to bond with other enlisted members, and giving to their organization, base and community. They also asked that members be in uniform as a means of advertising the U.S. military and USTRANSCOM.
The beautification effort, called "Project McHenry," is in a couple of phases. The first phase is inside the building and the surrounding grounds work. This has priority because the gentleman for which the school was named, Donald McHenry, is visiting the students in about three weeks. Successive phases are a broadening of the cleanup area into the surrounding neighborhood.
Materials were donated from the local community.
"We will probably do another cleanup effort in about six weeks," Yunk-Arnold says. "We also plan on visiting the fifth graders to give lectures and demonstrations. An example would be breaking open a military 'Meals Ready to Eat' package, showing the contents, how to activate the warming of the meal, tasting, describing the target user and why they're so high in calories."
Making up the volunteer team on April 6 were Yunk-Arnold; Senior Master Sgts. Kelly Householder, TCJ2, and Kevin McCoy, TCJ5; Master Sgts. Ronald Agee, J1; Jonathan Bey, TCJ3; and Allen Wilkinson, TCJ4; Tech. Sgt. Bryan Jones, TCJ6; Spc. Stanley Aoki, TCJ3; Petty Officer 3rd Class James Brooks, TCJ3; Senior Airman Edward Fichtenmayer, TCJ2; and Airman 1st Class Steven Wake, TCJ2.
