By Mary Frost
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
About 50 corporate volunteers wearing blue T-shirts put their back into it and gave a busy Downtown park a much-needed make-over.
Volunteers from Deloitte, one of the “big four” accounting and consulting firms, took time out from their laptops and number-crunching to paint benches and fences, pull weeds and generally clean up Cadman Plaza Park.
Friday's effort took in more than Cadman Plaza, however. Blue-shirted volunteers were seen working in parks and community organizations all over the city.
Steven Klebanow, a management consultant at Deloitte, said the effort was part of Deloitte’s “Impact Day” program, where throughout the country roughly 40,000 employees give back to their communities.
“In New York, about 900 Deloitte volunteers are working in 15 parks. We’re also volunteering with children’s services, homeless shelters and other places,” he told the Brooklyn Eagle.
Whitney Files, the director of volunteer programming at the city’s Partnership for Parks, said the cleanup was part of a joint program with the City Parks Foundation. "The difference they made today in NYC parks is incredible,” she said.
Deloitte employees also mulched in Red Hook, cleaned up Marcus Garvey Park and volunteered at afterschool programs like Beacon Center in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where they spent the day digging soil and preparing for a garden.
