Kaiser Permanente volunteers, local leaders take on holiday school work

They traded medical exam gloves for gardening gloves and lab coats for colorful t-shirts as a team of caregivers from Kaiser Permanente Redwood City and some local political leaders spent the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday as a “Day of Service” at Redwood City’s Taft Elementary school.
At Kaiser Permanente, the holiday has been for 11 years “a day on, not off” as caregivers from medical centers all over Northern California volunteer in the community to “fix-up-paint-up-clean-up.”
“Part of our mission is to improve the health of the community where we work,” said Dr. Timothy Wong, Endocrinology and an Assistant Physician-in-Chief at the Kaiser Permanente Redwood City Medical Center. “I’m sure when the children came back to school, they saw the work we did and got a real boost.”
Dr. Wong was working in the Taft School garden, wheeling loads of mulch to other volunteers who were spreading the mulch around the raised planting beds. One of those wielding a rake was Redwood City Council Member Alicia Aguirre who joined the Kaiser Permanente team along with Councilmember Janet Borgens who weeded the area prior to the mulch being placed. Assemblymember Kevin Mullin’s staff joined the volunteers again this year shoveling mulch, weeding the garden, and organizing the school’s storage area.