Blue Jackets employees celebrate Staff Volunteer Day

Joe Renza and the Blue Jackets are no strangers to the Beatty Community Center.

The CBJ fan development specialist was a member of the organization in 2019 when employees helped build a playground at the Near East Side park, one of eight team-branded playgrounds installed around Columbus thanks to an investment from the CBJ Foundation.

Five years later, Renza was back at the park Friday for the Blue Jackets’ annual Staff Volunteer Day in partnership with Schneider Downs. The beautification project done in conjunction with Columbus Recreation and Parks was one of seven stops made throughout Central Ohio in an effort to give back to the community.

Blue Jackets employees stepped out into sunny, humid weather Friday morning at Beatty Community Center to pick up litter, spread new mulch and put a little TLC into a facility they first built half a decade ago.

“Any time we can get out of the office, even if it’s a little hot out, it’s good to be able to get out here and do a beautification project,” Renza said. “That’s especially true for some of the staff members coming back to a playground they helped build in 2019. It’s good for them to be able to come back and see how it’s going. Personally, I was here in 2019, and the playground looks just as good to me as it did then.”

The employees’ return to the park was just one example of the long-term commitment of the Blue Jackets to help make Columbus a better place, as evidenced by the fact members of the organization devoted more than 4,700 hours to community service a year ago.

The presence of Renza and his Blue Jackets friends was welcomed by Brian Henry, who works in playground maintenance for the more than 400 parks cared for by Columbus Recreation and Parks.

“We have four people that are caring for all the playgrounds, and that includes the basketball courts and the tennis courts,” Henry said. “For the Columbus Blue Jackets to come out here and today and do this volunteer work, it frees us up to do all the other stuff. The city of Columbus truly appreciates it. I know the neighborhood and the kids that use this park do, too. It’s an awesome thing you do.”

In all, Blue Jackets employees put in 130 hours of service Friday. In addition to the work at Beatty Community Center, CBJ employees performed a similar beautification projects at Boy Scouts of America facility Camp Lazarus; prepared for a back-to-school rally at the YMCA’s Van Buren Center; prepped rooms for new families at the Ronald McDonald House; sorted donations at the YWCA Family Center; created banners to welcome Littles to camp and write notes of encouragement to campers who don't receive letters from home for Big Brothers Big Sisters; and made welcome kits for A Kid Again.

“This community does so much for us as a team and as individuals, so it's great and important that we come out and support them,” said Ivy Johnson, Blue Jackets manager of community partnerships. “I think the goal today is just serving as many people as we can in one day. We have such a great community and they do so much for us that I think it only makes sense for us to give back and help them as much as we can.”

In addition to the Blue Jackets helping in the community, employees at corporate partner Schneider Downs joined Friday, assisting with the rally preparation project at the YMCA’s Van Buren Center.

“We have been lucky enough this year to be first-year partners with the Columbus Blue Jackets, and one of the ways that we have decided to partner this year is to collaborate on this staff volunteer day and bring in some of our staff to help with that,” said Lindsay Sherrill, marketing manager at Schneider Downs’ Columbus office. “We at Schneider Downs try to do a really great job of ingratiating ourselves in the community and helping with different organizations as much as we can, so this felt like the perfect fit for us.”

When it was all said and done, a couple hours of everyone's time turned into a big impact at locations around the Columbus community.

“Volunteers are the backbone of our organization,” said Carolyn Slebodnik, administrative program director at the Van Buren Center. “We love being able to work with the community and partner with different groups like the Blue Jackets and getting them involved with the work we do so they are able to help make an impact, too.”

Blue Jackets journalism intern Kennedy Rehklau contributed to this article.