Come April 15, a small army of 190 or so cadets from Georgia Military College will descend upon Putnam County to visit up to 10 of Putnam’s public or non-profit facilities.
They will descend, however, from buses, not tanks, and they will be carrying not rifles, but shovels, mops and brooms.
It is in the shovels, mops and brooms where their Putnam partners come in. The partners include the annual Chamber of Commerce Leadership Putnam class, representatives from various organizations and facilities, Putnam County High School’s JROTC program and community volunteers.
The 190 cadets will supply the labor for an intense four-hour work period they are calling “Picking Up Putnam,” but they will need some help getting armed with the proper gear, including shovels, rakes, work gloves, and various cleaning materials needed at each site.
According to cadet-led presentations at a planning conference in Eatonton last Friday, fully half of the 190 cadets would be tentatively assigned to two of the larger sites – 60 at Butterflies and Blooms’ outdoor habitat assembling a couple of beehives, mending benches, planting, and building a new path – while another 40 would be at Butler-Baker, sweeping, mopping, dusting inside and trimming shrubs and clearing underbrush outside.
The plan calls for yet another 10 cadets to be at the Bledsoe-Greene House on Sumter Street doing yard work; 10 to be stationed at the Bronson House on North Madison, again doing mostly yard work; while upwards of two dozen cadets would help out at Putnam Christian Outreach, organizing food items and cleaning the furniture.
Additionally, 10 cadets would clean under and over the stage at The Plaza Arts Center; another couple of dozen would visit the VFW Thrift Store to clean shopping carts and hold a “police call” outside – that’s military-speak for picking up trash – and another 12 or so will take on similar police call at the Veterans Wall of Honor on Marion Street, along with changing batteries in solar lights and digging a dozen 2-foot holes for plantings.
The public areas of Pine Grove Cemetery also are tentatively included in the clean-up plan.
After four hours of various tasks will come lunch – “We’re used to sitting on the ground to eat,” one cadet quipped – and time to visit with any community members who drop by before the cadets load the buses again for the ride back to Milledgeville.
So, who gets what out of all this effort?
GMC gets visibility and proof of its connections to a wider community beyond its campus just a couple of blocks off Milledgeville’s main drag. Its cadet leaders get experience coordinating with outside agencies, then developing a plan (to an Army-style level of detail, of course), and then executing the plan.
Younger cadets get introduced to the notion of community service. Putnam service and charity organizations get a rush of free labor for often-neglected maintenance and beautification tasks, plus the chance to hang out for a few hours on a Saturday morning with some talented young folks.
It should be a classic win-win situation for all involved.