Sailors Serve Country, Still Find Time to Give Back
Projects Will Include Painting and Other Maintenance Duties

    SAN DIEGO — As many as 30 sailors from Naval Medical Center San Diego will put aside their duties serving their country to volunteer at St. Vincent de Paul Village’s main downtown facility, 1501 Imperial Avenue, on Wednesday, August 28, between 9 a.m. and 12 p.m.

   The corpsmen’s duties for the day will include doing some touch-up paint work on a section of exterior wall that was damaged during a February fire and painting the garage.

   St. Vincent’s President, Fr. Joe Carroll, is grateful for the time and compassion the sailors will share with the Village.

   "It’s incredible to me that this group of sailors, all of whom already have an incredible responsibility protecting and serving our country, finds the time to give back to St. Vincent’s," he says. "Our country is at war, yet these individuals recognize the incredible need that exists at the Village and lend a helping hand to our most vulnerable Americans – the homeless."

   Fr. Joe says the efforts of volunteers like the Navy corpsmen are crucial to the success of the Village.

   "If you think about it, if we didn’t have the thousands of volunteers who contribute in so many different ways at the Village, we’d have to hire people to perform those jobs," he says. "I love my employees, but more employees translates into more money being pulled from our rehabilitative programs and being redirected to paying salaries. Essentially, our volunteers save us hundreds of thousands of dollars annually."

   For more information on volunteering at St. Vincent de Paul Village, call
(619) 233-8500, ext. 1575.

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