“Circle of Service” Encircles Another Project

Men like to build stuff; fix things; repair broken down parts. And when you bring a group of men together who have a desire to improve our community, the possibilities for them to effect positive change in our community are endless. A newly-formed Circle of Service spent the morning of July 28th on the 700 block of Prairie Street installing a new deck for residents of a Laura Baker house. The carpenters extraodinaire (from left to right) included Rod Christensen, Judd Lohmann, Pete Schuster, Chris Huber, Dave Nitz , Tim Hanson, Rich Lorang and John Daniels.

What you see is only the midway point of service. Last weekend, Rich and his son Zach Lorang met with Noel Stratmoen (property manager of the house) to discuss the deck’s design and where to place footings and how to deal with existing landscape. Will Daniels (son of John) spent 3 hours on the project after this picture was taken. A railing is left to install and the volunteers will complete that shortly.

Circle of Service is the “brainchild” of our own Northfield resident Jim Pokorney. Jim’s belief is that you have 12 people get together about 3 or 4 times a year. One person in the circle is responsible to find a suitable project that the group can work on in a reasonable amount of time. The responsibility to find a volunteer opportunity rotates amongst group members. The idea is that if you have a circle of 12 people, you are only required to find a project once every 3 years or so. Besides volunteering their time, each member contributes a dollar amount to each project. The financial commitment can be as low as $5-10 per service project or perhaps as high as $50. The financial contribution helps to either acquire materials for the project or offset any costs related to the service project. In the case of the Laura Baker project, each member contributed $50 and Laura Baker picked up the difference.

In addition to the tangible results, Circle of Service has the added benefit of bringing people together to work on a common goal in a spirit of fellowship and community building. Circle of Service groups are forming all over Northfield and our community is becoming stronger and more closely knit because of the relationships that form when we spend time with our fellow community members.

A great big Thank You to this Circle of Service group for improving the lives of our Northfield Laura Baker residents. Thanks as well to those who worked behind the scenes to bring this project to fruition.