Guests at the Great Lakes Children’s Museum will notice a fresh coat of paint just about anywhere they look these days. Volunteers have stepped up this fall and have been applying paint to patchy and worn surfaces inside and outside the building.

United Way Day of Caring

On September 26 GLCM was one host site of many during the United Way Day of Caring. The Museum was lucky enough to have three teams onsite that day; Traverse Connect helped organize our storage barn, TC Light & Power spruced up the grounds and got us ready for the winter season, and the staff from BATA painted the outside of the building!

We went from various shades of red-orange and bare brick to a beautiful brick-red building on the North, East, and West sides of the building. They even painted the soffits and gray railing. Now our building is much more beautiful (and waterproof!)

GVSU Renew Crew

But what about the inside? Enter the ‘Renew Crew’ – a team of aspiring PAs from Physician Assistant Studies program. Every year, a crew from GVSU visits the Museum several times per year. This was the last visit from the 2021 crew and we closed the museum down for an afternoon of much-needed painting.

The Renew Crew helped revitalize the Freighter, Garden, Chicken Coop, Helicopter, Puppet Theater, Water Cycle, and several other odds and ends around the museum. Where once we had chipped corners and mismatched patches, now we have clean lines and bright colors. This crew is amazing!

 

 

Volunteers are critical to the mission of the Great Lakes Children’s Museum. We depend on volunteer help to go above and beyond offering a ‘decent’ facility and experience to our Museum guests. The work volunteers put into our building and exhibits doesn’t just make the place look nice – it adds care, ownership, and a sense of place. A professional painter can apply beautiful textures and clean lines, but only a volunteer can add love to a place with every paint stroke. So if you’re ever in the Museum and you see a paint drip, a mismatched color, or a brush mistake I hope it makes you smile and remember the love and care behind it. Thank you to ALL of our volunteers – we couldn’t do it without you, and we wouldn’t want to anyway.