MARIETTA, Ga. — Nearly 100 volunteers gathered at Shepherd’s Walk apartment complex in Marietta on Monday to help beautify the living spaces of over a dozen veterans.
The volunteers, comprising Home Depot employees, worked for about four hours painting buildings, building benches and planting gardens to transform the complex.
Shepherd’s Walk is a housing facility exclusively for veterans and is managed by Ministries United in Serving and Training (M.U.S.T Ministries). The apartments offer a home to veterans like Stefon Brown, who said that the project made him feel proud to be living in such a beautiful space.
“Yeah, you know, because you have people drive by, and they say, that’s a nice place. It looks great," Brown said. "It’s just like living in a home. Your own personal home."
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Volunteers transformed the large greenspace at Shepherd’s Walk into a beautiful garden. They planted various kinds of plants and azaleas and built park benches to provide a comfortable outdoor seating area for the veterans.
“We’re gonna do a garden for the veterans. We’re gonna work on the painting for the home here that you see," Crystal Hanlon, a volunteer, said, adding that there is a long list of tasks to complete. "I just lifted some sticks over there because we’re trying to make the area really nice. There’s teams building benches, but I’m not on that team. We’ve got all kinds of things going on today."
The goal of the project was to expand the living space for the veterans and create a more comfortable and beautiful environment for them. Ike Reighard of M.U.S.T Ministries said that the volunteers’ efforts would go a long way in achieving this goal.
“Whether it’s the planting they are going to be doing of all kinds of plants and azaleas," he said. "They are putting in park benches and areas for people to be able to come outside."
The Home Depot Foundation recently announced that it plans to add over 750 housing units in Atlanta to support homeless U.S. military veterans.
It will distribute $10.4 million in grants alongside its nonprofit partners to finance the project, including construction and renovation of supportive housing facilities, critical home repairs and innovative housing solutions for veterans facing homelessness.
Despite a 55% decline in veterans without stable housing, over 33,000 veterans still require help, according to the latest Department of Housing and Urban Development data. The foundation has committed over $100 million since 2011 to reduce homelessness among veterans. The group also aims to invest half a billion dollars in veteran causes by 2025.
“The number of veterans facing homelessness was more than 65,000 when we established our first formal financial commitment to veterans in 2011, and we’re proud to see progress today through significant declines in that figure,” Shannon Gerber, executive director of The Home Depot Foundation, said. “However, there is much more work to be done, and we remain dedicated to working with our nonprofit partners to ensure the heroes who served our nation have a place to lay their heads.”