Countywide : 420 Volunteers Help United Way Begin $6-Million Drive

After a long week of working as a manager for a local corporation, Hondo Frain was looking forward to doing something fun during the weekend. So he and some friends spent Saturday morning ripping out old carpeting, patching walls, tearing down shelves and hauling trash.

“It was a fun-filled morning,” said the Camarillo resident, one of more than 420 local volunteers who helped kick off the United Way 1990 fund drive.

United Way, which hopes to raise $6 million for local health and human care agencies, began this year’s campaign season with A Day of Caring II.

Volunteers spent four hours Saturday morning working at 33 county sites on projects such as gardening at a senior citizens center in Thousand Oaks, painting Jungle Gyms at a shelter for battered women in Simi Valley and bagging groceries at local food banks.

Frain and about 25 other volunteers helped refurbish a building on the 400 block of Main Street in Ventura that will house a secondhand store scheduled to open in October, Manager Val Bowman said. The proceeds will benefit cancer research.

Marjory Pfatenhauer was one of 10 women who volunteered to weigh and bag seven- and nine-ounce portions of macaroni, rice, beans and oatmeal for Ventura’s Project Understanding. The food will be passed out to needy people.

“The Day of Caring gets down to the basics of what United Way is all about: people providing help to other people,” said Sylvia Schnopp, director of marketing and communications for the nonprofit organization.

Organization officials say one out of three people in the county is served by United Way programs such as Meals on Wheels for the elderly, mentor programs for youth and emergency services for the homeless.

A Day of Caring, which originated in Ventura County last year, has won two United Way national awards: one for best volunteer development event and one for best special event overall, Schnopp said. She said she has received many calls from chapters nationwide about starting a similar program.

Last year, Frain was one of the 170 volunteers in the first Day of Giving.

“I’ve been volunteering for them on and off for the past 11 years,” he said.