CARBONDALE, Pa. — About 150 employees from Home Depot volunteered to spend the day getting their hands dirty at Camp Freedom near Carbondale. It's part of the company's mission to give back to veterans and veteran organizations.
"A lot of mulching, a lot of painting, building picnic tables, painting a lot of their decks, and ground beautification to try and make it an environment better for our veterans, first responders, and Gold Star families," said Brad Hendershot.
Team Depot, The Home Depot's associate volunteer force, split up taking on these projects to ease the burden on employees at Camp Freedom, which provides thousands of veterans and first responders a place to find peace in nature.
"It's stuff that we, as a staff of seven, could never get done. We would never have the time to do all of the beautification and some of these projects like this building, turning it into a pavilion. We'd never have time to do it," said Matt Guedes of Camp Freedom.
These projects couldn't come at a better time, as Camp Freedom has plenty of events scheduled through the summer as they continue to grow.
"We just finished our Ag building. We just have to put doors on it, and that will be done. We're cutting a one-mile-long range and then very important, is our next building is going to be our event and education center," Guedes said.
The cost of the projects these volunteers completed adds up to about $60,000 at no cost to Camp Freedom.
"In our region, we do approximately about 100 projects per year, and we really thrive on trying to do as much as we can giving back throughout the course of the year," Hendershot said.
The Home Depot Foundation has pledged to invest half a billion dollars in veteran causes by 2025.
Check out WNEP's YouTube channel.