Making A Difference in Your Community : L.A. Works Hopes L.A. Volunteers

In advertising you call it a tease or a come-on. Something to pique your interest, get the juices flowing and make you want more. At L.A. Works, a Hollywood-based nonprofit group founded by actor Richard Dreyfuss, public policy consultant Donna Bojarsky and attorney Bob Johnson, the hope is that their second annual volunteer day, “The Works ‘94,” scheduled for Saturday, will entice Angelenos to take a shot at volunteering and keep them coming back for more.

The event is also a simple, straightforward appeal aimed at the optimism they believe is still alive and well in L.A. despite our recent history of riots, floods, fires and earthquakes. The goal, L.A. Works Program Officer Greg Apodaca says, is to recruit 3,000 volunteers to be funneled to 40 different kinds of programs ranging from construction and repair, tree planting, and work with senior citizens and abused youth to environmental groups from Northridge to Long Beach.

“This is our big event, but it’s really only designed to introduce people to our group and get them into volunteering,” he said. Emphasizing that L.A. Works is a year-round operation, Apodaca says the program’s goal is to get people “off their couch and involved with their communities” for three or four hours on a weekend.

“We’re really geared for the busy individual who wants to volunteer but can’t figure out where to go or how to schedule that time in,” Apodaca said. L.A. Works, he added, acts as a clearinghouse to connect people to the group that best fits their interests and schedule.

Valleywide, projects scheduled for Saturday volunteer day include helping build eight low-income condo units at a Habitat for Humanity site in Pacoima, creating arts and crafts and reading stories to homeless children at the Valley Shelter in North Hollywood, repairing and painting classrooms at David Starr Jordan High School in Burbank and planting 250 apricot trees at Arroyo Seco Park in South Pasadena with the Clean and Green contingent of at-risk youth working for the Los Angeles Conservation Corps.

“This is our first real cooperative project with L.A. Works and we’re really looking forward to it,” said Robert Lamishaw, executive director for Habitat for Humanity of San Fernando/Santa Clarita Valleys. Habitat, which former President Jimmy Carter works with, is a developer of ownership housing for low-income families.

Lamishaw said Habitat’s Valley affiliate began two years ago, but the group’s first contact with L.A. Works came shortly after the January quake, when they used a few volunteers who worked on the Pacoima location. Low-income families, now living in substandard housing, were accepted into the program as new property owners at this Community Redevelopment Agency-donated site. They also qualify for no-interest mortgages from Habitat. The loans average $250 per month for the two-, three- or four-bedroom condos. Families also had to invest what Lamishaw terms 500 hours of “sweat equity” to qualify for the Pacoima housing.

“We’re hoping to get 30 to 50 people from the L.A. Works event to work on the condos, which are now 80% complete,” he said. “They’ll work alongside our regular people and the eventual owners of the condos.”

Bojarsky, the group’s current chairwoman and a longtime political activist, says the project’s real genesis was 10 years ago. “I tried to start this kind of group in the early 1980s but the synergy just wasn’t right and it never got off the ground,” she said. “This time with Richard’s help and my best friend, Bob Johnson, who does the group’s legal work, we got it going and started recruiting volunteers, getting grants and corporate sponsors.”

She said the $10,000 in seed money to begin L.A. Works came from Dreyfuss. The largest corporate sponsors so far have been Sony Pictures Corp., Cigna Health Care and Home Depot. This year, volunteers are scheduled to meet at 8 a.m. Saturday at Exposition Park, 39th Street and Vermont Avenue near USC, where they will be bused to and from their assigned sites. The volunteers will be welcomed by Dreyfuss and Mayor Richard Riordan, who Bojarsky said is proclaiming Saturday L.A. Works Day in the city.

For information on L.A. Works, call (213) 465-4907.

Getting Involved is a weekly listing of volunteering opportunities. Please address prospective listings to Getting Involved, Los Angeles Times, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311. Or fax them to (818) 772-3338.