Children's Charity Gets Help from Penn State Alumni Volunteers

(Pasadena, CA)--Volunteers from the Los Angeles Chapter Penn State Alumni Association and Hillsides families gathered together to landscape and beautify an outdoor communal area at Hillsides Community Center in Echo Park. Hillsides, a Pasadena charity that creates safe places for children in foster care and prevents the cycle of domestic violence for children at risk and their families, recently opened the newly renovated Echo Park facility in March for families in the surrounding communities.

For 17 years the Penn State Alumni volunteers have helped create a safe and beautiful place for children in foster care. At Hillsides’ main campus in Pasadena volunteers have landscaped children’s cottages, created a basketball court for the children to play on, along with various other projects. This year the volunteers decided to help the Hillsides Community Center by landscaping a previously unusable area for children and families to enjoy and use. The area once covered in overgrown plants and darkness has now become a beautiful tranquil Japanese inspired garden with a bubbling solar waterfall.

Frank Tremmel, a Penn State Alumni volunteer, owns and operates Neighborhood Nursery and was the facilitator of this year’s project. “We like to ask Hillsides for their greatest need every year and when we realized that the new center had this unusable area we wanted to make it so the kids could enjoy it and have someplace peaceful and safe to go,” said Tremmel.

In designing the new garden, Tremmel was able to have a solar waterfall donated by Oase, an international pond supply company. While the waterfall’s peaceful gurgling blocks some of the street noise, the Oase pump will be completely self sufficient and require no work from the Hillsides staff or families.

Cindy Macias-Real, Program Manager for Hillsides Community Center, was glad to see families, who they work with to prevent the cycle of domestic violence, spend time together on such a worth while project. “During our parenting classes we teach these families how to interact with each other and what activities they can do together. This project allows them to be active with their children and spend quality time together,” said Macias-Real.

After several hours of manual labor by volunteers, children and families, Hillsides Community Center now has an incredibly peaceful and inviting place in the middle of the city where families can go to relax and enjoy a beautiful spot.

As a Pasadena charity founded in 1913, Hillsides creates safe places for children in foster care living in its residential treatment center and is a community treatment center preventing the cycle of abuse for children at risk and their families. To learn more about Hillsides, visit www.Hillsides.org.

Hillsides
940 Avenue 64
Pasadena, CA 91105
www.Hillsides.org
Contact - Marisol Barrios-Jordan
323.254-2274 x.274
mbarriosjordan@hillsides.org

This release was published on openPR.